tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-51284793133731998912018-03-13T11:53:54.366-04:00popsublimeAppreciations of art and popular culture (movies, music, books, theater) from long ago to now.Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03004111643204359175noreply@blogger.comBlogger59125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5128479313373199891.post-12137253215773125212018-02-10T23:55:00.000-05:002018-02-24T16:48:06.914-05:00The Music of Tommy Page<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3E-LRtZ8pC4/Wn_Jst0-S4I/AAAAAAAABNA/ok9UKCqhghETespcrMemoREq3Q1ltltJgCLcBGAs/s1600/TommyPageSigned.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3E-LRtZ8pC4/Wn_Jst0-S4I/AAAAAAAABNA/ok9UKCqhghETespcrMemoREq3Q1ltltJgCLcBGAs/s200/TommyPageSigned.jpg" width="189" height="200" data-original-width="477" data-original-height="506" /></a></div> <div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">I met Tommy Page back in 1990, when I was only 17. As the editor of my high school newspaper in suburban Cincinnati at that time, I possessed a youthful fearlessness and a love for pop music that convinced me it would be totally fine to call up music labels in New York and request to interview their artists on summer concert tours. To my surprise, it always worked. I went to a fairly large high school of about 1,500 students, the perfect audience of middle American teenagers to whom those record labels wanted to sell cassette tapes, concert tickets, and merchandise. I was curious enough about the careers of pop musicians to have scored interviews with acts like New Kids on the Block, Sweet Sensation, and Tiffany, something that might not happen as easily for a Midwestern high school student today.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-M9O58ZQ4-sE/Wn_J_YRhpoI/AAAAAAAABNI/yBVGwEH1Jmci9TDHAT2MM81bQqiRMxJIQCLcBGAs/s1600/TommyPageBlueChair.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-M9O58ZQ4-sE/Wn_J_YRhpoI/AAAAAAAABNI/yBVGwEH1Jmci9TDHAT2MM81bQqiRMxJIQCLcBGAs/s200/TommyPageBlueChair.jpg" width="196" height="200" data-original-width="480" data-original-height="489" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">My meeting with Tommy Page was a little more tense than my other interviews had been. Clearly, we were both gay, which made us slightly nervous I think, sitting alone together in a backstage room of Timberwolf amphitheater at Kings Island amusement park in 1990. After our interview was done, some radio guys from Q102, the big pop music station in Cincinnati, came in to record some on-air spots with Tommy. While the sound engineers were setting up the microphones, Tommy was just having fun with us, gossiping about stuff like Mariah Carey’s then-secret relationship with her boss, the label head of Columbia Records; this was just after Carey’s first single, “Vision of Love,” had been a huge radio hit. It all made such a lasting impression on me that I can vividly recall every detail in that backstage room to this day: the fluorescent lights, the faux-wood paneling, the gentle rasp in Tommy’s voice when he spoke, and the way his jet-black bangs fell to either side of his face.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-G9IyqjyNHY0/Wn_Kx4Et1OI/AAAAAAAABNU/yyFbEu96vfc8omfXxRk1-NrhybUZZEiWACLcBGAs/s1600/TommyPageTanktop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-G9IyqjyNHY0/Wn_Kx4Et1OI/AAAAAAAABNU/yyFbEu96vfc8omfXxRk1-NrhybUZZEiWACLcBGAs/s200/TommyPageTanktop.jpg" width="147" height="200" data-original-width="251" data-original-height="341" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">A little less than a year ago now, on a cold Saturday morning in early March, I was stunned when I heard from a writer at <i>Billboard</i> magazine that Tommy Page had died from an apparent suicide the night before, alone at his country home in Pennsylvania. The former <i>Village Voice</i> gossip columnist Michael Musto, who’d been a close friend of Tommy’s when they were younger, broke the story online right after I found out. Following a string of albums and hit singles back in the late ’80s and early ’90s, Tommy had forged a successful career as a music industry executive, and he’d also started a family with his husband Charlie, with whom he was raising three children. By coincidence, I would be in New York that next week on the day of Tommy’s funeral, so I took the hour-long bus ride from Port Authority down to his hometown of Caldwell, New Jersey, to attend the service that Wednesday morning.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">It was heavy to carry my young memories from so long ago into the Presbyterian church there. Several women my age who were sitting together in the row in front of me, and who had known Tommy since childhood, cried throughout the entire service. The whole congregation wept when one of Tommy’s young sons spoke about his dad from the pulpit. Then one of Tommy’s brothers played a beautiful version of Journey’s “Don’t Stop Believing,” which he said had been one of Tommy’s favorite songs. Most of the congregation quietly sang along. I think it came as a relief to us, in a time of grief and confusion, to share in the love of something simple like a pop song together.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-80KrmYTX1cM/Wn_LOFVq9HI/AAAAAAAABNY/WHOEylAmCQU5YpiMkLJH11pnXLJQA0FZgCLcBGAs/s1600/TommyPageWall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-80KrmYTX1cM/Wn_LOFVq9HI/AAAAAAAABNY/WHOEylAmCQU5YpiMkLJH11pnXLJQA0FZgCLcBGAs/s200/TommyPageWall.jpg" width="163" height="200" data-original-width="253" data-original-height="311" /></a></div><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">Tommy released seven albums during the height of his recording career, with several songs that climbed up the pop and dance charts and enjoyed good runs there. By the mid-‘90s, his core audience had shifted from America to Asia, where he continued to perform annually to dedicated, appreciative audiences. Listening back through his discography over this past week, I was impressed by how diverse the styles of his albums are, ranging from Latin/freestyle club cuts to appealing pop ballads to some semi-classical numbers later in his oeuvre. My favorite of Tommy’s songs, 1990’s “I Break Down” (co-produced by Joe Mardin, son of legendary producer Arif Mardin), was re-recorded by Tommy in a gorgeous orchestral version in 2015; that new rendition was featured on his eighth and final album, a self-released compilation of songs hand-selected from his own catalog and simply titled <i>My Favorites.</i></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><i><br /></i></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-K71ECLduiEQ/Wn_LdWlFOdI/AAAAAAAABNg/SMkXkWtiztIvNUFlCawOsMK489fAEAfGACLcBGAs/s1600/TommyPage1988.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-K71ECLduiEQ/Wn_LdWlFOdI/AAAAAAAABNg/SMkXkWtiztIvNUFlCawOsMK489fAEAfGACLcBGAs/s200/TommyPage1988.jpg" width="200" height="198" data-original-width="303" data-original-height="300" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">When Tommy Page’s eponymous debut album was released in 1988, I was working at Camelot Records in Northgate Mall, across the street from where I grew up in Cincinnati. I remember opening of a box of deliveries from Sire Records, Tommy’s label (and Madonna’s, too), then seeing Tommy’s Elvis-inspired cover photo starting up at me from a cassette near the top of the box. “Who’s that?” I thought. He had quietly arrived on the pop music scene with minimal fanfare, though that album did spawn his first radio hit, the ballad “A Shoulder to Cry On.” I was more drawn to the dance tracks on that album, like “A Zillion Kisses” and the endlessly fun, openly sexual “Turning Me On,” which are among the most club-ready songs that Tommy recorded. There’s also a pulsating number that he wrote and arranged with Grammy-nominated songwriter Shelly Peiken, “Love Takes Over,” as well as a catchy ode to non-conformity called “Hard to Be Normal.”</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OAAG8lthsc4/Wn_LsnocucI/AAAAAAAABNs/AZxqO31ynO4fpGOM3K2yyYA3CkKwQmS4ACLcBGAs/s1600/TommyPagePaintingsInMyMind.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-OAAG8lthsc4/Wn_LsnocucI/AAAAAAAABNs/AZxqO31ynO4fpGOM3K2yyYA3CkKwQmS4ACLcBGAs/s200/TommyPagePaintingsInMyMind.jpg" width="192" height="200" data-original-width="341" data-original-height="355" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">Tommy’s sophomore effort, <i>Paintings in My Mind</i> from 1990, would be his biggest commercial success, in part because of the involvement of New Kids on the Block, who were riding high on the wave of the boyband craze at the time. They shared credit for two songs on the album with Tommy: the bouncy “Turn on the Radio” and the heartfelt “I’ll Be Your Everything,” Tommy’s <i>Billboard</i> #1 single, the lyrics of which now poignantly sound like they could have been written for Tommy’s young daughter, Ruby. Tommy also sang the album’s duet “Don’t Give Up on Love” with Latin/freestyle artist Safire (aka Wilma Cosme), with whom he later formed a dance music partnership called Cosmic Page.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wM3a3S5urdQ/Wn_L7LCmk6I/AAAAAAAABNw/RuZ2N5QjtYASK_MQ9_0dQzVh7P_n6nIPgCLcBGAs/s1600/TommyPageFromTheHeart.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-wM3a3S5urdQ/Wn_L7LCmk6I/AAAAAAAABNw/RuZ2N5QjtYASK_MQ9_0dQzVh7P_n6nIPgCLcBGAs/s200/TommyPageFromTheHeart.jpg" width="197" height="200" data-original-width="296" data-original-height="300" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">By the time his third album was released a year later, 1991’s <i>From the Heart</i> found Tommy Page reaching for a more mature sound. The record’s lead single, “Whenever You Close Your Eyes,” written by Michael Bolton and Diane Warren, with its soaring chorus and rousing gospel-choir backdrop, raised the bar for the next chapter of Tommy’s recording career. Songs such as the upbeat “Under the Rainbow” and a moving version of Eric Carmen’s “Never Gonna Fall in Love Again” proved that he was capable of sustaining a more refined form of drama on his records, suggesting in a carefully considered way that he (and his audience) had moved past teenage years and into adulthood.</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-53Qum7nHOEU/Wn_MIhtglWI/AAAAAAAABN0/iES-cTdGZGc1WGFL_bUiPbPq3J9-pv4CQCLcBGAs/s1600/TommyPageTenTilMidnight.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-53Qum7nHOEU/Wn_MIhtglWI/AAAAAAAABN0/iES-cTdGZGc1WGFL_bUiPbPq3J9-pv4CQCLcBGAs/s200/TommyPageTenTilMidnight.jpg" width="200" height="200" data-original-width="324" data-original-height="324" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">Tommy’s next few albums were released in markets throughout Asia. <i>A Friend to Rely On</i> from 1992 opens with an awesome cover of Nik Kershaw’s mid-‘80s hit “Wouldn’t It Be Good,” while 1994’s <i>Time</i> contains excellent, pensively danceable tracks like “Places in My Heart” and “If I Had a Wish.” <i>Loving You</i> from 1996, titled after a number from Stephen Sondheim’s 1994 musical <i>Passion</i>, includes some of Tommy’s accomplished renditions of songs by other artists, like Cyndi Lauper’s “That’s What I Think” and John Waite’s “Missing You,” as well as another superb track written by Diane Warren, “I Keep Hoping.” A smart handful of cover songs also appears on Tommy’s self-released album <i>Ten til Midnight</i> from 2000: a hardcore house version of Breakfast Club’s 1987 hit “Right on Track,” which sounds like the kind of dance track that Tommy always wanted to record, Ari Gold's wonderful "Dance to the Beat of My Heart," and a sensitive rendering of Nikki’s popular 1990 single “Notice Me.”</span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-EnvocsXO2UE/Wn_MQF1mhII/AAAAAAAABN4/fVVMACXBmJYkJjuWdgov5h0DU2dSeDGHQCLcBGAs/s1600/TommyPageWriting.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-EnvocsXO2UE/Wn_MQF1mhII/AAAAAAAABN4/fVVMACXBmJYkJjuWdgov5h0DU2dSeDGHQCLcBGAs/s200/TommyPageWriting.jpg" width="200" height="133" data-original-width="1024" data-original-height="679" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">The final post and photograph on Tommy Page’s Twitter timeline in January of 2017 indicates that he was working on new songs, something that’s heartbreaking to consider now, of course. I’ve thought of Tommy and his music often throughout the past year, and even so, it took me nearly twelve months to feel enough clarity about his tragic death to be able to write this post. I’m fortunate that I had a chance to meet him years ago, and I can find some comfort in knowing that his music will last.</span></div>Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03004111643204359175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5128479313373199891.post-64977826247374965142018-01-01T17:30:00.000-05:002018-01-15T12:18:32.536-05:00Five Favorite Films of 2017<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-H70HQcRfpDo/WkqzT1xmkuI/AAAAAAAABLc/WKiLl5xm-XAg5HtWHYuk4UcRH1B_7ttIQCLcBGAs/s1600/GhostStory.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="666" data-original-width="666" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-H70HQcRfpDo/WkqzT1xmkuI/AAAAAAAABLc/WKiLl5xm-XAg5HtWHYuk4UcRH1B_7ttIQCLcBGAs/s200/GhostStory.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">As popular cinema grew ever more mainstream and dominant throughout 2017, in a year when even the political realm became more corporate and corrupt (who thought that could be possible?), the small arthouse films that appealed to me the most also got riskier and more ambitious than usual. When the artistic stakes are higher, it makes sense that this type of counter-balancing would take place, a kind of aesthetic resistance and survival instinct, which is also a refusal to give in to market demands, saying that artful movies aren’t going anywhere, and saying it more demonstratively and provocatively than in prior years.</span><o:p></o:p></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">David Lowery’s <i>A Ghost Story</i> lingered with me longer than any other movie that I saw in 2017. Even while I was watching it at the cinema, I knew that would be the case. Framed in a square with rounded corners in the center of the screen, to evoke the look of old printed snapshots from photo albums, the movie is a valentine to the idea of time, as well as a bold and resonant excavation of the meaning of time. On its quiet and undisturbed surface, it’s a story of grief, and one that many people who chose not to see the film thought was driven by a gimmick. A ghost under a flowing white sheet with eye-holes cut out of it haunts the home that Casey Affleck’s unnamed character shares with Rooney Mara’s unnamed character after Affleck’s character dies in a car crash early in the film.</span><o:p></o:p></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lUScXPUmIpM/WkqzwVZdprI/AAAAAAAABLg/6ZW4UXyFTxg48x4YDH--CE2TfhR8DDNxwCLcBGAs/s1600/GhostStoryNote.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1075" data-original-width="1503" height="143" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-lUScXPUmIpM/WkqzwVZdprI/AAAAAAAABLg/6ZW4UXyFTxg48x4YDH--CE2TfhR8DDNxwCLcBGAs/s200/GhostStoryNote.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">Long, silent scenes in which the camera doesn’t move at all set up the action of the tale, as it were. The body of Affleck’s character, seen from a distance across the room, lying under a white sheet at the hospital. Mara’s grief-stricken character, sitting alone on the floor of their dark kitchen, methodically devouring an entire pie over several minutes. These scenes are not meant to try the viewer’s patience, but to put us in the characters’ mindset, and to begin to ask what it means for minutes, hours, days, and years to pass, both in the presence of others and in the absence of others. And an image that might seem sentimental elsewhere — the ghost repeatedly attempting to scratch open a painted-over crack in a wooden doorframe, in which Mara’s character has slipped a secret note — felt perfectly logical and moving to me.</span><o:p></o:p></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-F6x_wK3Vk4M/Wkqz2vI9gAI/AAAAAAAABLo/pYnt0SG_URUYArtjdM3S7-QvgLBV2gbjACLcBGAs/s1600/GhostStoryCity.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1168" data-original-width="1600" height="146" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-F6x_wK3Vk4M/Wkqz2vI9gAI/AAAAAAAABLo/pYnt0SG_URUYArtjdM3S7-QvgLBV2gbjACLcBGAs/s200/GhostStoryCity.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">When the succession of humans isn’t in the house, the ghost is never alone for too long. It can see another ghost in a similar predicament in the house across the way, and the two ghosts can even communicate with one another, at least for the audience’s purposes. Because this is a film that’s better to watch knowing less than more, I’ll leave the movie’s other rich details and innovations unexplained, except to mention that the film’s ambitions deepen and quicken when the entire movie pivots and the ghost cascades through time and space, only for time and space to loop back on themselves until the experience of the film circles into a seamless whole and vanishes all at once. Few films work on poetic association and pull it off, but this one does.</span><o:p></o:p></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--eEBbtuqOXE/Wkq0LVOBFUI/AAAAAAAABLs/1c8WuVTmKnIXr_hUEseUMJWcNhhC81H_QCLcBGAs/s1600/GodsOwnCountry.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="349" data-original-width="620" height="113" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/--eEBbtuqOXE/Wkq0LVOBFUI/AAAAAAAABLs/1c8WuVTmKnIXr_hUEseUMJWcNhhC81H_QCLcBGAs/s200/GodsOwnCountry.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><i>God’s Own Country</i>, a British debut directed by Francis Lee, was the best gay-themed movie that I watched over this past year, and not just because everything turns out fine for the two central characters in the end. Set in the austere and rolling hills of Yorkshire, it’s the first gay movie since Alain Guiraudie’s <i>Stranger by the Lake</i> that’s so fully formed by its immersive landscape and atmosphere. The story follows Johnny Saxby (Josh O’Connor), who’s become increasingly withdrawn and dissatisfied from living and feeling entrapped on his family’s remote sheep farm. A fast and discreet encounter with another young man after a livestock auction near the start of the film shows that Johnny’s not comfortable with anything more than casual sex, though a conversation with a female friend of Johnny’s outside of a pub also suggests that he has been somewhat openly gay, if also obviously self-stunted by his rural environment.</span><o:p></o:p></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gU-tNuYMYz8/Wkq0kxcId2I/AAAAAAAABL0/ys1o7cPx5B41Cjty6Tan3tmjOEgv1JrCQCLcBGAs/s1600/GodsOwnWall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="600" height="133" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-gU-tNuYMYz8/Wkq0kxcId2I/AAAAAAAABL0/ys1o7cPx5B41Cjty6Tan3tmjOEgv1JrCQCLcBGAs/s200/GodsOwnWall.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">The appearance of Gheorghe (Alec Secareanu), a young Romanian man who comes to help out on Johnny’s farm, gradually changes all of that, and the film draws its intimate power from the slow dance of attraction in which the two men become entangled. It’s impossible not to compare the film to <i>Brokeback Mountain</i>, of course, and <i>God’s Own Country</i> alludes directly to its predecessor not only thorough sheep-herding, but also via articles of the men’s clothing that are shared and left behind. In a film whose dialogue is often spare, subtle and precise symbols convey more readily what the two men are feeling: repairing a stone wall together that they nonetheless remain on opposite sides of, an abandoned sweater that Johnny pulls over himself, echoing a riveting earlier scene in which Gheorghe protects a tiny lamb in a way that nudges harshness into tenderness. While I felt the screenplay ran out of road a bit by the end (an it’s an end that also seems a bit too easy to me), the film’s performances are beautifully calibrated, and Josh O’Connor’s transformation as Johnny struggles to re-emerge from himself is remarkable.</span><o:p></o:p></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-iKXonjW7JxI/Wkq0rG7p0GI/AAAAAAAABL8/z3oiaMHHyUMRx9EYl1HKWx8iXBsGyB-dwCLcBGAs/s1600/MotherPoster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="400" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-iKXonjW7JxI/Wkq0rG7p0GI/AAAAAAAABL8/z3oiaMHHyUMRx9EYl1HKWx8iXBsGyB-dwCLcBGAs/s200/MotherPoster.jpg" width="133" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">Unlike the two previous films, there’s very little that’s quiet in Darren Aronofsky’s <i>mother!</i> Starring his current real-life girlfriend Jennifer Lawrence, the movie has been almost universally lampooned and reviled, with just a brave handful of critics coming to its defense. It’s definitely the most demanding and artistically ambitious movie that I saw in 2017, as well as one of the funniest and most brutal films of this past year. The laughter and horror that I felt while watching <i>mother!</i> at the cinema were so close to each other that they sometimes almost coincided, and I haven’t experienced a film in a very long time which has accomplished that. Aronofsky also references everything from <i>Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?</i> to <i>Rosemary’s Baby</i>, yet he still manages to create a film that’s rarely derivative and totally unique.</span><o:p></o:p></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-odDY0feag5Q/Wkq0y5GBcwI/AAAAAAAABMA/tZiPcjSjdB0oSvNa4Ll4SOS84JhhitVuACLcBGAs/s1600/MotherStill.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="617" data-original-width="926" height="133" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-odDY0feag5Q/Wkq0y5GBcwI/AAAAAAAABMA/tZiPcjSjdB0oSvNa4Ll4SOS84JhhitVuACLcBGAs/s200/MotherStill.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">Most interpretations of <i>mother!</i> that I’ve read and heard since watching the film skitter along the allegorical surface of the movie; Jennifer Lawrence’s character represents Mother Nature, some viewers think, and how she’s been exploited by human beings. Others mention the biblical underpinnings of the farcical plot in the film’s first half, when Ed Harris’ character brings his wife, played by Michelle Pfeiffer, to visit the home where the god-like figure of Javier Bardem, a reclusive poet, resides with his young wife played by Jennifer Lawrence. It unfolds as a strange comedy of manners until the two sons of the visiting couple crash the party, setting the second half of the film into motion with an act of violence that’s clearly intended to be likened to the story of Cain and Abel.</span><o:p></o:p></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-v8cgDAepwbg/Wkq04788SBI/AAAAAAAABME/gzZse1Q1ajMLAWejeetWNVxXrDfUjsmGgCLcBGAs/s1600/MotherDoor.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="716" data-original-width="1116" height="128" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-v8cgDAepwbg/Wkq04788SBI/AAAAAAAABME/gzZse1Q1ajMLAWejeetWNVxXrDfUjsmGgCLcBGAs/s200/MotherDoor.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">Beyond that point is where the film gets interesting and the metaphors go deeper. Although I don’t think Bardem’s character is a stand-in for Aronofsky himself as director, the film certainly does transmit messages about authoritative male power in that creative context, alongside and in contrast to how women (and particularly Hollywood actresses) get treated by audiences and the publicity machine of moviemaking: adored, sexualized, worshipped, scrutinized, shunted aside as time passes, then brutalized by the cult of celebrity as they age. (I couldn’t help thinking how this movie was made just when Hillary Clinton was being savaged in the press, the ultimate misogynistic takedown of a woman in a position of power.) The film’s most brilliant stroke is that the cult of celebrity becomes an actual uncontrollable cult, a cult that dismantles the entire house piece by piece and utterly invades the central couple’s privacy, to put it mildly. All of this unfolds as the mass violence of the past century stampedes across the screen in ways I’ve never before seen on film, and in ways I’m not sure any other director could achieve.</span><o:p></o:p></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-l7QQN09Mc8M/Wkq1AsDiFiI/AAAAAAAABMI/M6alP0Y18JsHt4LyZbg8BqwFhgAfptRsACLcBGAs/s1600/FacesPlaces.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="652" data-original-width="668" height="195" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-l7QQN09Mc8M/Wkq1AsDiFiI/AAAAAAAABMI/M6alP0Y18JsHt4LyZbg8BqwFhgAfptRsACLcBGAs/s200/FacesPlaces.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">My favorite documentary of 2017, and the easiest film to love this past year, was <i>Faces Places </i>(or <i>Visages Villages</i> in French), directed by filmmakers and street photographers Agnès Varda and JR. A smart combination of a road movie, odd-couple comedy, and public art project, the film traces the journey of JR’s traveling “photography truck,” which produces larger-than-life printed images directly from a slot on the side of the vehicle. The pair drive from town to town through the French countryside, finding everyday people to photograph and meaningful stories to tell, always with some sort of humanistic or political slant. Then, they wheat-paste their large-scale images onto particular surfaces for particular reasons, creating outdoor art installations that may last for years and attract widespread attention, or become ephemeral within a brief period of time.</span><o:p></o:p></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-O-roSpZdQyA/Wkq1Hqy-0MI/AAAAAAAABMQ/DEyqNg8S818bDAcDDoSeSXgUfaRjJUkawCLcBGAs/s1600/FacesPlacesWall.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="300" data-original-width="300" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-O-roSpZdQyA/Wkq1Hqy-0MI/AAAAAAAABMQ/DEyqNg8S818bDAcDDoSeSXgUfaRjJUkawCLcBGAs/s200/FacesPlacesWall.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">Early in the movie, the filmmakers encounter an older woman in an industrial town, who staunchly refuses to move out of her home and vacate it for developers. Because she’s resided there for nearly her entire life and now lives alone, her story immediately resonates with viewers; we feel like we know her in only a matter of minutes, just in time for her face to be emblazoned across the front of the building that she has a right not to leave. Three wives of shipyard workers in a port city also see their images blown up to gigantic sizes after they pose before towering stacks of multicolored shipping containers; their stories are as just as significant as those of the men who surround them.</span><o:p></o:p></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Ng7zEB_HBSA/Wkq1Pu4x7yI/AAAAAAAABMU/4FnRLhKf4fYiNTcAGBn_jubjIelKsKPogCLcBGAs/s1600/FacesPlacesBunker.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="485" data-original-width="727" height="133" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Ng7zEB_HBSA/Wkq1Pu4x7yI/AAAAAAAABMU/4FnRLhKf4fYiNTcAGBn_jubjIelKsKPogCLcBGAs/s200/FacesPlacesBunker.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">Agnès Varda herself is a legend of French New Wave cinema, a contemporary and close colleague of Jean-Luc Godard (who has a certain kind of unflattering cameo late in the film), so her own personal stories are equally important in the documentary. After sharing her recollections of friends and artists from her youth, she and JR undertake one of the most memorable photography projects of the film, affixing a long-ago image of one of her deceased friends to the side of a military bunker from World War II that fell from a cliffside to the beach below, only to become upended and permanently lodged in the sand. She remarks how her friend (the late fashion photographer Guy Bourdin) now appears as if he’s in a cradle, just like he belonged there.</span><o:p></o:p></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MYjAXo9O-Kk/Wkq1VTBPYWI/AAAAAAAABMY/Ar-jyRfZIDk8IOEgIp2DIM3l28WZ2yYBwCLcBGAs/s1600/Brimstone%2526Glory.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="321" data-original-width="214" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-MYjAXo9O-Kk/Wkq1VTBPYWI/AAAAAAAABMY/Ar-jyRfZIDk8IOEgIp2DIM3l28WZ2yYBwCLcBGAs/s200/Brimstone%2526Glory.jpg" width="133" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">On the same day (Thanksgiving) that I saw <i>Faces Places</i> for a noon matinee at The Quad cinema in New York City, I went back to see another excellent documentary later that night. I had stayed a bit longer in New York to watch a preview in Union Square of the much-anticipated gay movie <i>Call Me by Your Name</i>, which left me more than a little disappointed, so right afterwards I walked back over to The Quad to watch <i>Brimstone &amp; Glory</i>, Viktor Jakovleski’s dazzling short documentary about the Mexican town of Tultepec’s annual National Pyrotechnics Festival fireworks extravaganza. To go from the relative lack of expected fireworks in <i>Call Me by Your Name</i> to the abundantly real fireworks of <i>Brimstone &amp; Glory</i> provided me with exactly the boost that I needed, accompanied by an intense soundtrack of percussion that had me drumming away on my pant-legs in the otherwise empty theater.</span><o:p></o:p></div><div style="-webkit-text-stroke-color: rgb(0, 0, 0); -webkit-text-stroke-width: initial; font-stretch: normal; line-height: normal; min-height: 12px; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><span style="font-kerning: none;"></span><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-N_VBeCtvwCM/Wkq1dzdY5uI/AAAAAAAABMc/xv5trEchsqIzDDQHg5BQMhaZ7uJscd-2gCLcBGAs/s1600/BrimstoneGloryStill.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="162" data-original-width="311" height="104" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-N_VBeCtvwCM/Wkq1dzdY5uI/AAAAAAAABMc/xv5trEchsqIzDDQHg5BQMhaZ7uJscd-2gCLcBGAs/s200/BrimstoneGloryStill.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">In addition to showing how the residents of Tultepec spend many months of each year manufacturing their fireworks by hand, the documentary focuses on both parts of the fireworks festival: the Castles of Fire, and the Burning of the Bulls. The first part of the festival, attended by thousands of spectators annually, features enormous ten-story towers of fireworks with many spinning parts. We climb up these towers with workers (who are wearing tiny portable cameras on their hats) as they’re being constructed, and we even see one tower get struck by lightning in a storm and begin to go off prematurely. The second part of the festival is much more interactive, with spectators carrying and running with piñata-like bulls the size of trucks, packed with and trailing fireworks, which the onlookers all then chase and dance in the wake of. A team of medics treats the injured who’ve been burned or gotten hot cinders in their eyes, including young children, who then jump right back in to chase the bulls some more, a community ritual in which they want to partake. To be amazed by such daring footage captured so close up and wonder how the filmmakers did it lifted me out of the theater and into the sky.</span><o:p></o:p></div>Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03004111643204359175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5128479313373199891.post-90876805764996300962017-12-10T00:30:00.000-05:002017-12-10T13:09:58.394-05:00Favorite Christmas Albums<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-m3A0WkcYz7k/WizCN4W7hvI/AAAAAAAABKE/5vN7C20sBtcujKsqGmM7olbw7bXKWoqZQCLcBGAs/s1600/CharlieBrownXmas.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-m3A0WkcYz7k/WizCN4W7hvI/AAAAAAAABKE/5vN7C20sBtcujKsqGmM7olbw7bXKWoqZQCLcBGAs/s200/CharlieBrownXmas.jpg" width="200" height="200" data-original-width="355" data-original-height="355" /></a></div> <div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">It’s easy for me to choose my favorite Christmas albums of all time because they’re the same ones that I’ve pulled off of my CD shelf every December for the past twenty years now. Typically, I play them on steady rotation from the middle of the month through Christmas Day. I’m not a follower of any organized religion, but these albums always give me a sense of peace at what can otherwise be a hectic and difficult time of the year. Now that the snow is falling here in New England once again, it’s time for me to return to that little stack of wintertime albums. In addition to the Vince Guaraldi Trio’s <i>A Charlie Brown Christmas</i> (Fantasy Records, 1965), which everyone already knows well enough that it needs no further comment, here are some of the other holiday albums that I return to annually, most of which are lesser known and fairly rare.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JCWfyaX8CPU/WizEmIRNx0I/AAAAAAAABKQ/ynP1AVw0zCIsQxOyYE_HTm6Yj65ugkhZACLcBGAs/s1600/AcousticChristmas.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-JCWfyaX8CPU/WizEmIRNx0I/AAAAAAAABKQ/ynP1AVw0zCIsQxOyYE_HTm6Yj65ugkhZACLcBGAs/s200/AcousticChristmas.jpg" width="200" height="200" data-original-width="500" data-original-height="500" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Acoustic Christmas</i>(Columbia Records, 1990), features a diverse roster of artists spanning many genres. At the time of its release, several musicians on the compilation were already quite celebrated (Judy Collins, Art Garfunkel, Laura Nyro), while some others have since gone on to acclaimed careers (Rosanne Cash, Shawn Colvin, Harry Connick, Jr.) or have somewhat faded from mainstream public view (The Hooters, Poi Dog Pondering, Shelleyan Orphan). The late Laura Nyro’s medley “Let It Be Me / The Christmas Song,” performed with a light piano and keyboard, is one of the most beautiful cuts on the record, as is Judy Collins’ classic rendition of “The Little Road to Bethlehem.” “Winter Wonderland” and “It Came upon a Midnight Clear” are finely delivered by Harry Connick, Jr. and Rosanne Cash, respectively, while Art Garfunkel’s airy, multi-tracked vocals on “Oh Come All Ye Faithful” are both reverent and haunting. Poi Dog Pondering’s spirited version of the Hawaiian Christmas tune “Mele Kalikimaka” lends the album a fun novelty song, and Shelleyan Orphan’s memorable “Ice” is the collection’s lone original track.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lxy0RXKL0Xo/WizEs_HkOOI/AAAAAAAABKU/qTGGaK9fdDAPPCZ_WU-lE4R08kO246QCACLcBGAs/s1600/ChristmasInTheCity.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lxy0RXKL0Xo/WizEs_HkOOI/AAAAAAAABKU/qTGGaK9fdDAPPCZ_WU-lE4R08kO246QCACLcBGAs/s200/ChristmasInTheCity.jpg" width="200" height="196" data-original-width="600" data-original-height="589" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Released the same year as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Acoustic Christmas</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Christmas in the City</i> (WTG/CBS Records, 1990)&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">captures quite well a specific moment in the evolution of pop music history: New York City’s Latin/freestyle explosion. While a few of the artists on this compilation scored national radio hits (The Cover Girls, George LaMond, Denise Lopez, Brenda K. Starr), the rest of the acts fared well on the era’s dance club scene. The Latin All Stars’ faithful version of the traditional “Feliz Navidad” makes an obligatory appearance, and Brenda K. Starr’s upbeat, light-hearted take on Darlene Love’s “Christmas (Baby Please Come Home)” feels fully invested. Original tracks like Paris by Air’s “It’s Another Holiday” and Denise Lopez’s “All I Want 4 Xmas Is Your Love” joyously recall the awesome Latin pop of the ’80s and early ’90s. But the album’s truly excellent track is the Cover Girls’ percussive, piano-infused “New York City Christmas,” a song that really everybody should know, probably the best Christmas song created for a dance floor that I’ve ever heard.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zFXMF40H5vM/WizE0GN0DvI/AAAAAAAABKY/nmNXZ8cyDtsVLB4FKf2mhSMVrLqMZDpMACLcBGAs/s1600/AmyGrantHomeForXmas.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zFXMF40H5vM/WizE0GN0DvI/AAAAAAAABKY/nmNXZ8cyDtsVLB4FKf2mhSMVrLqMZDpMACLcBGAs/s200/AmyGrantHomeForXmas.jpg" width="200" height="200" data-original-width="500" data-original-height="500" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Among Amy Grant’s several Christmas-themed albums, my favorite is definitely her second holiday collection, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Home for Christmas</i> (A&amp;M Records, 1992). The vocals and orchestrations are stellar throughout the album’s twelve tracks, and Grant covers a full range of Christmas classics, from a pensive “Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas” to an uplifting “It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year” to a rollicking “Rockin’ Around the Christmas Tree.” Ballads like “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” and David Foster’s “Grown-Up Christmas List” are equally affecting, as are the album’s original numbers, such as Carly Simon’s “The Night Before Christmas” and two magisterial songs that Grant co-wrote with Chris Eaton, “Emmanuel, God with Us” and “Breath of Heaven (Mary’s Song),” which has steadily become a favorite for other songwriters to cover.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/--d7FbmfB7cM/WizE51bWSEI/AAAAAAAABKc/PQmQF8f-2js7-vq1-i1xvrUM2zzgY04tACLcBGAs/s1600/AnimalsXmas.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/--d7FbmfB7cM/WizE51bWSEI/AAAAAAAABKc/PQmQF8f-2js7-vq1-i1xvrUM2zzgY04tACLcBGAs/s200/AnimalsXmas.jpg" width="200" height="198" data-original-width="500" data-original-height="496" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Amy Grant also contributed vocals to perhaps one of the best little-known holiday albums ever, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Animals’ Christmas</i>(Columbia Records, 1986). A cantata composed by the great American songwriter Jimmy Webb, with inspiration from a children’s book by Anne Thaxter Eaton, the project was helmed by Art Garfunkel, who sings the album’s lyrics alongside Amy Grant and the boys’ choir at St. Paul’s Church in London. This concept record traces the story of the first Christmas night through the perspective of the animals involved in the Christmas nativity tales. My favorite song in the cycle, “Incredible Phat,” follows the innkeeper’s cat, who watches over the scene as Mary and Joseph arrive, along with “three balmy old coots / in silver boots,” and then leads the young couple “to a tumble-down shack” behind the inn, where their child is born. The song is gorgeously introduced by “The Decree,” on which Art Garfunkel sings the biblical account of the angel Gabriel, guiding Joseph and Mary through the night. The album was also co-produced and engineered by famed Beatles’ producer Geoff Emerick, so enough said.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-czdwN8Wj0j4/WizE_VVx7yI/AAAAAAAABKg/MLdwTx80X3IzhnmEHVt6t1iglJ8ZbOGngCLcBGAs/s1600/ShawnColvinHolidaySongs.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-czdwN8Wj0j4/WizE_VVx7yI/AAAAAAAABKg/MLdwTx80X3IzhnmEHVt6t1iglJ8ZbOGngCLcBGAs/s200/ShawnColvinHolidaySongs.jpg" width="200" height="200" data-original-width="450" data-original-height="450" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Shawn Colvin’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Holiday Songs and Lullabies</i>(Sony Music/Columbia Records, 1998) opens with one of my favorite renditions of one of my very favorite winter songs, “In the Bleak Midwinter,” sung and played with just the right amount of mournful melancholy that the song requires. As the album’s title suggests, it’s a compendium of Christmas songs and tunes for small children, recorded when Colvin was pregnant with her daughter. As a child herself, Colvin had loved Maurice Sendak’s 1965 book <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lullabies and Night Songs</i>, and his artwork adorns the CD’s liner notes. The lullabies that Colvin selected to include all fit the Christmas theme: “Now the Day Is Over,” “All Through the Night,” “Evening Is a Little Boy,” “The Christ Child’s Lullaby.” Likewise, the album’s holiday standards all sound like lullabies: Vince Guaraldi’s “Christmas Time Is Here,” the chiming traditional “Love Came Down at Christmas,” a sparely arranged “Silent Night.” And some of Colvin’s choices, like “Seal Lullaby” from Rudyard Kipling’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Jungle Book</i> and the drifting “The Night Will Never Stay,” approach the sublime.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-O-xMXgxbvtE/WizFF8LzgCI/AAAAAAAABKk/6QoiJ3hG8_M0BJjDltup8JrWWiIaEBX8gCLcBGAs/s1600/WintersSolstice.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-O-xMXgxbvtE/WizFF8LzgCI/AAAAAAAABKk/6QoiJ3hG8_M0BJjDltup8JrWWiIaEBX8gCLcBGAs/s200/WintersSolstice.jpg" width="200" height="199" data-original-width="600" data-original-height="597" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Finally, a pair of instrumental New Age albums always fit the mood perfectly at this time of the year, when the days are short and the nights are cold and long. Will Ackerman’s Windham Hill Records has released several superb compilation albums in their <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Winter’s Solstice</i>series, but my favorite remains the original <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Winter’s Solstice</i> from 1985. Although a few of the tracks lean in the direction of Christmas fare, such as David Qualey’s opening guitar version of “Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring,” Philip Aaberg’s moving “High Plains (Christmas on the High-Line),” and Liz Story’s quiet piano rendition of “Greensleeves,” other tracks evoke winter more broadly: Will Ackerman’s somber “New England Morning,” Malcolm Dalglish’s darker-toned “Northumbrian Lullabye,” and Mark Isham’s “A Tale of Two Cities.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:DocumentProperties> <o:Template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:Revision>0</o:Revision> <o:TotalTime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:Pages>1</o:Pages> <o:Words>1104</o:Words> <o:Characters>6298</o:Characters> <o:Company>Emerson College</o:Company> <o:Lines>52</o:Lines> <o:Paragraphs>12</o:Paragraphs> <o:CharactersWithSpaces>7734</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:Version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:DontAutofitConstrainedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="276"> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <!--EndFragment--><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uouZsiS7U_o/WizFSW6sGHI/AAAAAAAABKs/zGwTQd6FJcg4UEvwFH95stVRc1V1wI_ygCLcBGAs/s1600/GeorgeWinstonDecember.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uouZsiS7U_o/WizFSW6sGHI/AAAAAAAABKs/zGwTQd6FJcg4UEvwFH95stVRc1V1wI_ygCLcBGAs/s200/GeorgeWinstonDecember.jpg" width="200" height="200" data-original-width="600" data-original-height="600" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Another Windham Hill artist, solo pianist George Winston, deserves the last slot on this list for his pristine, beloved 1982 album <i>December</i>. Beginning with “Thanksgiving” and ending with “Peace,” plus a virtuosic “Carol of the Bells” midway through, Winston’s <i>December</i> easily shows why it’s gathered such a wide international audience over time. Five of the album’s twelve songs were composed by Winston, one was written by jazz trumpeter Alfred S. Burt, and the other half are traditional and classical pieces in the public domain, from the Appalachian carol “Jesus, Jesus, Rest Your Head” to 18th-century carol “The Holly and the Ivy” to variations on Pachelbel’s Canon. When <i>December</i> ends, its aura continues to echo into the new year.</span><span style="font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03004111643204359175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5128479313373199891.post-68196610617545928702017-10-15T21:15:00.000-04:002017-10-20T08:56:04.946-04:003rd Annual GlobeDocs Film Festival (October 11th - 15th, 2017)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-b1jMd3XYlcI/WeQFkgWXDDI/AAAAAAAABI4/GAlSHSQ5yEIqSqzkD5g7hjY6Rm_TdX0LACLcBGAs/s1600/GlobeDocsLogo.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-b1jMd3XYlcI/WeQFkgWXDDI/AAAAAAAABI4/GAlSHSQ5yEIqSqzkD5g7hjY6Rm_TdX0LACLcBGAs/s200/GlobeDocsLogo.png" width="200" height="66" data-original-width="1204" data-original-height="398" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I show documentaries in my classes as often as I assign readings, and I’ve long told my students that they can learn as much from a good documentary as they can from a good book. This year’s GlobeDocs Film Festival, sponsored by the Boston Globe in conjunction with HUBweek, offered abundant evidence of just how educationally rewarding well-crafted documentaries can be. Over the past weekend, I watched seven excellent films, all at the Brattle Theatre in Harvard Square, with topics ranging from the worldwide refugee crisis to restorative justice to male ballet dancers to airboating in the Everglades.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_MGq9CKcoPo/WeQFxkuqeyI/AAAAAAAABI8/rcU6wdU0N_IHaEyhJ5kjvmNvxFvcD3hxACLcBGAs/s1600/HumanFlow.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-_MGq9CKcoPo/WeQFxkuqeyI/AAAAAAAABI8/rcU6wdU0N_IHaEyhJ5kjvmNvxFvcD3hxACLcBGAs/s200/HumanFlow.jpg" width="200" height="153" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="1227" /></a></div>The Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei’s latest film, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Human Flow</i>, provides a widescreen and consummately global perspective on the current struggles of international migrants to overcome forced displacement and settle in new lands. Covering refugees from 23 countries over one year, the movie’s scale is unmatched in addressing this subject. Ai Weiwei’s camera steadily and intrepidly follows masses of migrants as they trek together down muddy roads, up steep trails through mountainous terrains, across rivers that they wade while carrying luggage and children in their arms, and over oceans in solitary boats overflowing with passengers.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nmF5tFOAiNY/WeQF-2sSHjI/AAAAAAAABJA/T2GaJg-h_Io4M2TIdYv91oArQoX-rTPnQCLcBGAs/s1600/HumanFlowRefugees.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-nmF5tFOAiNY/WeQF-2sSHjI/AAAAAAAABJA/T2GaJg-h_Io4M2TIdYv91oArQoX-rTPnQCLcBGAs/s200/HumanFlowRefugees.jpg" width="200" height="132" data-original-width="800" data-original-height="529" /></a></div>The first half of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Human Flow</i> focuses more on these vast streams of bodies and faces than individual stories, though the film’s latter half does shift to consider particular narrative strands as well. Several of the people whose stories make their way into the film still linger powerfully in my memory: a man who fled Myanmar with other refugees and laments being referred to as “boat people” when they’re all human beings whose futures were destroyed by the brutality of the military <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">junta</i>in their homeland; a group of young women in Gaza who express to the camera their dream of traveling the world and then returning home; and a traumatized man from Syria who weeps over the makeshift graves of his five family members who drowned at sea while trying to sail to a new life in a better place.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-m4pFgNSIDOE/WeQGGBwIT_I/AAAAAAAABJE/yvuNDh5InmE2cyFGzN8GHnftGgAizfw0gCLcBGAs/s1600/HumanFlowAerial.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-m4pFgNSIDOE/WeQGGBwIT_I/AAAAAAAABJE/yvuNDh5InmE2cyFGzN8GHnftGgAizfw0gCLcBGAs/s200/HumanFlowAerial.jpg" width="200" height="108" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="865" /></a></div>The final segments of the film include highly composed aerial drone footage of sprawling temporary refugee camps and neatly organized migrant neighborhoods. The drone cameras pan across these migrant spaces calmly and gradually, and one even descends straight down from far overhead to land gently in a circle of people who have gathered around it. These images suggest at once the enormity of the refugee crisis and the seeming smallness of the 65 million individual lives currently affected, the largest number of refugees since World War II. A former astronaut from Aleppo, Mohammad Fares, through his own perspective on our planet from high above, summarizes the film’s humanist global message: “We all have to share.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0CaFWNj3Ch0/WeQGU65U_cI/AAAAAAAABJM/efP8vEwzRiojmLPac4sUg_HEpL-OveN-wCLcBGAs/s1600/CircleUp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-0CaFWNj3Ch0/WeQGU65U_cI/AAAAAAAABJM/efP8vEwzRiojmLPac4sUg_HEpL-OveN-wCLcBGAs/s200/CircleUp.jpg" width="200" height="200" data-original-width="512" data-original-height="512" /></a></div><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Circle Up</i>, directed by Julie Mallozzi, is among the most profound and moving films I’ve ever seen on the theme of forgiveness. Set in the Dorchester neighborhood of Boston, the film tells the story of Janet Connors, whose son Joel was stabbed to death in his apartment at age 19. Connors has since become a vocal advocate and practitioner of restorative justice, seeking to help find meaningful forms of redemption for those who have committed violent crimes, including the men who killed her own son, rather than just calling for retribution and incarcerating them through the court system. She facilitates community “circles” to promote victim-offender dialogues as a form of individual and communal healing; these circles of talking and listening about each other’s tragedies are inherited from Native American peoples, whose practices are also closely explored in the film.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2zCtXlVIGV8/WeQGb0GFFyI/AAAAAAAABJQ/cGcICIOGqE05W4T-jNVzPKQCAW0uq14uQCLcBGAs/s1600/CircleJanetConnors.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-2zCtXlVIGV8/WeQGb0GFFyI/AAAAAAAABJQ/cGcICIOGqE05W4T-jNVzPKQCAW0uq14uQCLcBGAs/s200/CircleJanetConnors.jpg" width="200" height="112" data-original-width="299" data-original-height="168" /></a></div>The documentary gathers much of its power from Connors’ relationship with one of the men responsible for her son’s homicide. The man is identified in the documentary only as “AJ,” and his face is never fully revealed on camera. Filmed from behind in partial profile and partial shadow, he recounts the experience of meeting Connors when she arranged to visit him in prison, mainly so that she could share with him her own side of the tragic loss of her son. At the time of the visit, he recalls, he was still too young to feel much in response to what she shared. As required by law, their entire exchange was transcribed on paper, a document to which AJ returned several years later when he was placed in solitary confinement. Her words finally break through to him, and he writes her a detailed letter, initiating a genuine plea for forgiveness that changes the course of his life. After his release from prison, the two visit Joel’s gravesite together as part of their reconciliation, an image that I doubt will ever fully leave my mind.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-sUjW95jIxQo/WeQGmDVUy7I/AAAAAAAABJU/R1WM-j_ksLMzBE1kJGJ9xb9e1r0u-r7qgCLcBGAs/s1600/AnatomyMaleBalletDancer.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-sUjW95jIxQo/WeQGmDVUy7I/AAAAAAAABJU/R1WM-j_ksLMzBE1kJGJ9xb9e1r0u-r7qgCLcBGAs/s200/AnatomyMaleBalletDancer.jpg" width="200" height="153" data-original-width="1275" data-original-height="975" /></a></div>I also feel fortunate to have seen documentary portraits of two extraordinary artists whose work I was totally unfamiliar with before watching the films: the Brazilian ballet dancer Marcelo Gomes, and the late, celebrated Getty Images photojournalist Chris Hondros. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Anatomy of a Male Ballet Dancer</i>, finely directed by David Barba and James Pellerito, presents Gomes as an effortlessly likable and professionally enduring personality. Despite the intense physical demands of his 20-year international career in ballet, beginning with his studies at Florida’s famed Harid Conservatory to his present status as a principal performer with the American Ballet Theatre, Gomes has persistently maintained a great sense of humor while keeping his eye firmly fixed on the level horizon of his dreams.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GsgUQzUDF9M/WeQGv2XKOTI/AAAAAAAABJY/qYlHj9wndz8h1e6IXrTvsJJO44BzZ-5FACLcBGAs/s1600/MarceloGomes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-GsgUQzUDF9M/WeQGv2XKOTI/AAAAAAAABJY/qYlHj9wndz8h1e6IXrTvsJJO44BzZ-5FACLcBGAs/s200/MarceloGomes.jpg" width="200" height="113" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="900" /></a></div>While the documentary focuses mostly on Gomes’ artistic and professional development over time, his personal life and family life are also considered in the film. He was among the first major male ballet dancers to come out as gay publicly when he was featured on the cover of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Advocate</i> magazine; having been raised by a pair of gay uncles, he mentions at one point in the movie that coming out as a teenager was no problem for him at all, due to their example and caring influence. His relationship with his father is also explored because at the time the film was made, his father had still never traveled to see Gomes perform in an American Ballet Theatre production in New York. His father was supportive of Marcelo’s decision to pursue ballet from a young age, so having the opportunity for his father to watch him dance on a New York stage is a wish that Gomes still hopes to fulfill before he retires from his ballet career.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Th_p-e_pysE/WeQG4tiCLEI/AAAAAAAABJc/IHxP15BMRWQE5OZBqG8m7GdchJWTVqhBwCLcBGAs/s1600/ChrisHondros.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Th_p-e_pysE/WeQG4tiCLEI/AAAAAAAABJc/IHxP15BMRWQE5OZBqG8m7GdchJWTVqhBwCLcBGAs/s200/ChrisHondros.jpg" width="200" height="150" data-original-width="640" data-original-height="480" /></a></div>Photographer Chris Hondros, one of the most prominent photojournalists of the past two decades, covered wars in Liberia, Iraq, and Libya, and his images became some of the foundational touchstones of those conflicts for the general public through news media outlets. One of his colleagues mentions that Hondros “was there for every major world event” in recent years. He was killed at age 41 in 2011, during coverage of a violent combat situation in Libya. One of his closest friends since childhood, the non-fiction author and filmmaker Greg Campbell, has directed <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Hondros</i> as a deeply engrossing film that’s also a much-deserved memorial to Chris.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-TOsgUVQglk8/WeQHBe823OI/AAAAAAAABJg/HHfyrzhSfw4byof2YV5ZZnHXCvVX22WcQCLcBGAs/s1600/ChrisHondrosLiberianFighter.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-TOsgUVQglk8/WeQHBe823OI/AAAAAAAABJg/HHfyrzhSfw4byof2YV5ZZnHXCvVX22WcQCLcBGAs/s200/ChrisHondrosLiberianFighter.jpg" width="200" height="113" data-original-width="1296" data-original-height="730" /></a></div>Several interviewees in the documentary mention that Hondros’ pursuit of high-risk scenarios abroad seemed to be authentically rooted in human empathy. He found ways to re-connect with his subjects long after he had photographed them. For instance, he sought out the young Liberian fighter at the center of what would go on to be perhaps Hondros’ best-known image, urged the man to return to school, and gave him the funding to help him do so, which the man later says completely turned his life around in a positive direction. The dangers of Hondros’ career were manifold, but he continued to capture those images and cultivate those relationships. When his mother Inge Hondros is interviewed in the film, she recounts how Christopher’s father tried to dissuade him in his youth from pursuing a career in photography, and she flat-out told Chris’ dad, “Zip it.” That gave Hondros the chance to follow his true calling.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-coTQVFDHnF0/WeQHKPFCrMI/AAAAAAAABJo/xeN2Rt7rmvIcFOM5Uj_MBa5YCJBd3QkPQCLcBGAs/s1600/Gladesmen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-coTQVFDHnF0/WeQHKPFCrMI/AAAAAAAABJo/xeN2Rt7rmvIcFOM5Uj_MBa5YCJBd3QkPQCLcBGAs/s200/Gladesmen.jpg" width="200" height="113" data-original-width="1280" data-original-height="720" /></a></div>Finally, I was quite surprised to enjoy <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gladesmen: The Last of the Sawgrass Cowboys</i> as much as I did. I wasn’t sure before watching the film if the topic of airboating in the Florida Everglades would hold my interest, but director David Abel and his producing partner Andy Laub have created a beautifully made and timely film that’s filled with entertaining characters and important environmental issues. The backdrop of isolated south Florida marshland, with its wide blue skies and spectacular sunsets, is itself reason enough to see the film. But the people who inhabit it are equally intriguing from start to finish because they’re fighting to maintain their distinctive way of life. Congress recently passed legislation that will begin to phase out private airboating in the Everglades; anyone who wasn’t at least 16-years-old in 1989 will no longer be permitted to operate an airboat privately. The National Park Service sought to pass these laws for environmental purposes. They claim that airboat trails through sawgrass are re-routing the natural water flow in ways that harm the environment, and they also want to eradicate hunting in the Everglades. Some gladesmen earn their income from hunting for frogs, alligators, and other animals in the marshlands.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:DocumentProperties> <o:Template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:Revision>0</o:Revision> <o:TotalTime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:Pages>1</o:Pages> <o:Words>1496</o:Words> <o:Characters>8530</o:Characters> <o:Company>Emerson College</o:Company> <o:Lines>71</o:Lines> <o:Paragraphs>17</o:Paragraphs> <o:CharactersWithSpaces>10475</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:Version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:DontAutofitConstrainedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="276"> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <!--EndFragment--><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zPQnhDIfH3g/WeQHWVofalI/AAAAAAAABJs/4TClY-z2eOUKP6pseAoOusNl_JfPQlNwACLcBGAs/s1600/GladesmenAirboat.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zPQnhDIfH3g/WeQHWVofalI/AAAAAAAABJs/4TClY-z2eOUKP6pseAoOusNl_JfPQlNwACLcBGAs/s200/GladesmenAirboat.jpg" width="200" height="150" data-original-width="700" data-original-height="525" /></a></div>Lifelong residents of the area, like the film’s key figure, Donnie Onstad, argue that the gladesmen’s children and grandchildren should have a right to the same idyllic upbringing and family rituals that he grew up with himself. Most of the airboaters interviewed in the film mention how remote the territory is, and they say that airboating is really the only way to access many locations. Others remark, rightfully, that airboating is therefore a long-standing form of communing peacefully with their natural environment, and a way of being at one with it. But the most sobering comments in the film come from Professor Harold Wanless, chair of Geological Sciences at the University of Miami, who says without question that, due to climate change and sea-level rise, coastal areas of southern Florida will be overtaken by the ocean within the next century, perhaps even sooner. For that reason, and many others witnessed in these documentaries, I felt that the films in the GlobeDocs festival speak urgently both to our present moment and to our future.</span><span style="font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03004111643204359175noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5128479313373199891.post-27132708583803662017-08-13T03:30:00.002-04:002017-08-23T21:58:17.299-04:00Everything but the Girl, Idlewild (Sire Records, 1988)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ReP-h8Yo52Q/WY__iuWiQkI/AAAAAAAABFg/_irAI5S0z9MSHwVPlytfuAoqwJJ0AXdfwCLcBGAs/s1600/EBTGIdlewild.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="600" data-original-width="600" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ReP-h8Yo52Q/WY__iuWiQkI/AAAAAAAABFg/_irAI5S0z9MSHwVPlytfuAoqwJJ0AXdfwCLcBGAs/s200/EBTGIdlewild.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">I remember about twelve years ago having lunch with a former friend and colleague, when Everything but the Girl’s “Oxford Street,” from their 1988 album <i>Idlewild</i>, suddenly came on the restaurant’s sound system. I was so surprised that anybody would even think of playing the song that I perked up and admitted — seemingly outdated ’80s tune though it was — that it had always been one of my favorite songs. My lunch companion replied incredulously, “<i>Really?</i>” and I think he even rolled his eyes at me a bit. To the uninitiated, it’s a song that sounds like a long-lost soft rock ballad that an adult contemporary radio station back then would have played. Not so cool or hip, he thought, despite my insistence that he just wasn’t listening to the song closely enough.<o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">Before I say anything more about the album itself, I want to say something important about taste. The colleague I had lunch with is a former friend in part because I don’t think taste should be informed too much by fear of what others will think about our taste. Actually, I don’t think that sort of taste is really taste at all; rather, it’s fallout from some kind of juvenile peer pressure that creeps into the lives of many people I’ve known over time, and far past their middle school days. Genuine taste is not a form of social currency. It’s <i>sensibility</i>, a map of who we most authentically are as individuals, and that’s something I’ll continue to defend, and probably forfeit more friendships over, until my time here on earth is done.</span></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uxjvB5tcAzI/WZAD1syExoI/AAAAAAAABGM/f9nTeQ8U1VQuXMuWYiAXc9_bl7f0uyragCLcBGAs/s1600/EBTGIdlewildAd3.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><img border="0" data-original-height="489" data-original-width="554" height="177" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-uxjvB5tcAzI/WZAD1syExoI/AAAAAAAABGM/f9nTeQ8U1VQuXMuWYiAXc9_bl7f0uyragCLcBGAs/s200/EBTGIdlewildAd3.jpg" width="200" /></span></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">Ben Watt and Tracey Thorn recorded <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Idlewild</i>three decades ago now, in the autumn of 1987, about five years into their career as a duo. When the album was released several months later, they were both 25-years-old. The sophisti-pop movement in the United Kingdom was still going strong, and I heard and loved it all from as far away as my childhood hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio. In a hilarious moment from a 1988 promotional interview, Tracey explained that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Idlewild</i>was titled after the original name of New York’s airport (now JFK) and said, “The Americans have this wonderful knack for naming their places with a kind of poetic imagination that seems to reveal itself nowhere else in their entire culture.” That's somewhat harsh, but also largely true.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-W-yNaWcGizE/WY__16X9whI/AAAAAAAABFo/xWaWDuVlIrA7LnF_mGQ0HDnXLe5UidlZgCLcBGAs/s1600/EBTGIdlewildAd.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><img border="0" data-original-height="575" data-original-width="1439" height="80" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-W-yNaWcGizE/WY__16X9whI/AAAAAAAABFo/xWaWDuVlIrA7LnF_mGQ0HDnXLe5UidlZgCLcBGAs/s200/EBTGIdlewildAd.jpeg" width="200" /></span></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">Nevertheless, the homespun, measured tone of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Idlewild</i>, leaning away from jazz and more towards pop, was clearly aiming for an American audience, although Everything but the Girl wouldn’t begin to find an audience in America until their 1990 album <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Language of Life</i>. Lyrically, the songs on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Idlewild</i> are very much rooted in England, in a way that the Anglophile in me finds irresistible. “Oxford Street” poignantly thinks ahead to London life by reaching back to Tracey’s upbringing in Hatfield and her university years in Hull: “When I was ten I thought my brother was god, / he’d lie in bed and turn out the light with a fishing rod... / Then when I was nineteen, I thought the Humber would be / the gateway from my little world into the real world.” I think it’s the smart balance of lyricism and prosaic poise that makes me love this song so much, along with its vocals delivered through a calm evenness that only Tracey Thorn can pull off in exactly the way she does.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xfzRJEZD0wE/WY__73pxVII/AAAAAAAABFs/Fh-VxD_g1_MPFmYUGkCiwPjSHQla54aGACLcBGAs/s1600/EBTGTheseEarlyDaysEP.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><img border="0" data-original-height="494" data-original-width="494" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-xfzRJEZD0wE/WY__73pxVII/AAAAAAAABFs/Fh-VxD_g1_MPFmYUGkCiwPjSHQla54aGACLcBGAs/s200/EBTGTheseEarlyDaysEP.jpg" width="200" /></span></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">I had never paid much attention to the subject of “These Early Days” until I was listening to the album again tonight to write this review, even if this is an album whose music itself I know totally by heart, having listened to it literally hundreds of times. The song’s written for a child in Tracey’s life, a child who’s only two at the time. Its gentle refrain (“though you may weary of this vale of tears, / these days remember, always remember”) reminds me of Gerard Manley Hopkins’ famous poem “Spring and Fall” and the child Margaret in that poem (“yet you will weep and know why”), as she ponders the falling leaves and her own mortality.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-EpPZpOJfp9A/WZAABp_vNnI/AAAAAAAABFw/3MsGpcspo6Q3zPysfE2thaJDrkVdF7XYwCLcBGAs/s1600/EBTGIAlwaysWasYourGirl.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><img border="0" data-original-height="459" data-original-width="526" height="175" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-EpPZpOJfp9A/WZAABp_vNnI/AAAAAAAABFw/3MsGpcspo6Q3zPysfE2thaJDrkVdF7XYwCLcBGAs/s200/EBTGIAlwaysWasYourGirl.jpg" width="200" /></span></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">Another of the album’s four singles, “I Always Was Your Girl,” counterpoints its airy synthesizers and tenor saxophone with some down-to-earth humor, as Tracey sings of a couple who feel ill-at-ease in the world: “You put your friends through hell, / and that’s why we get along so well... / Self-assured and abusing guests, / that’s the way I like you best.” Ben’s wistful lyrics and vocals on “The Night I Heard Caruso Sing” extend the album into deeper territory (“if I only do one thing, / I’ll sing songs to my father, / I’ll sing songs to my child; / it’s time to hold your loved ones / while the chains are loosed and the world runs wild”). And on a sunny summer holiday in Italy, “Lonesome for a Place I Know” returns to dim rains of the UK: “The hedgerows and the townhalls... / something pulls, something I can’t define tells me England calls.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:DocumentProperties> <o:Template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:Revision>0</o:Revision> <o:TotalTime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:Pages>1</o:Pages> <o:Words>781</o:Words> <o:Characters>4454</o:Characters> <o:Company>Emerson College</o:Company> <o:Lines>37</o:Lines> <o:Paragraphs>8</o:Paragraphs> <o:CharactersWithSpaces>5469</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:Version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:DontAutofitConstrainedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="276"> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <!--EndFragment--><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vbzhKiT-Ers/WZAWPclG9-I/AAAAAAAABG0/6ofFfPU5znwc2w-oxooIucFD-IUdhwiqgCLcBGAs/s1600/EBTGIDontWantToTalk.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><img border="0" data-original-height="444" data-original-width="528" height="168" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-vbzhKiT-Ers/WZAWPclG9-I/AAAAAAAABG0/6ofFfPU5znwc2w-oxooIucFD-IUdhwiqgCLcBGAs/s200/EBTGIDontWantToTalk.jpg" width="200" /></span></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">Some of the other songs on <i>Idlewild</i> got considerably more attention, including an ace cover of “I Don’t Want to Talk About It,” the song that was popularized by Rod Stewart a decade earlier, and “Apron Strings,” which the film director John Hughes selected, in a less subdued version, for the soundtrack of his 1988 movie <i>She’s Having a Baby</i>. The excellent B-sides from the album’s singles, such as “Hang out the Flags,” “Home from Home,” and “Dyed in the Grain,” also saw a second life when <i>Idlewild</i>was re-issued as a deluxe edition (with many home demos and outtakes) by Edsel Records in 2012. These extras are wonderful to have, of course, but so is the original album, which remains in my top five favorite albums of all time</span><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">.</span><span style="font-family: &quot;times&quot;;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03004111643204359175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5128479313373199891.post-3719852355266031192017-06-19T21:03:00.000-04:002017-07-09T01:36:57.301-04:0019th Annual Provincetown International Film Festival (June 14th - 18th, 2017)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-d3SQe6AHXzw/WUhvbYHaSeI/AAAAAAAABBU/e9K9e77sK0UjHlkYuPq1k1IwEw9Uzb8_QCLcBGAs/s1600/PIFFlogo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-d3SQe6AHXzw/WUhvbYHaSeI/AAAAAAAABBU/e9K9e77sK0UjHlkYuPq1k1IwEw9Uzb8_QCLcBGAs/s200/PIFFlogo.jpg" width="200" height="131" data-original-width="714" data-original-height="468" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">A frequent refrain at this year’s Provincetown International Film Festival was a reaction to the current political climate. From filmmakers to programmers to award recipients (and sometimes even in the festival films themselves), numerous artists, producers, and collaborators expressed their concerns about what artists and audiences may have to endure over the next few years, as the arts come increasingly under threat by a government administration that’s been defunding arts initiatives and vital forms of support for creative work. Whenever someone voiced their trepidation from the microphone, the sentiment was always that we in the room would have to keep our art forms alive and carry them forward, both as creators and as spectators. One of the most memorable festival documentaries that I’ll be returning to below, <i>Spettacolo</i>, directly addresses this issue through the citizens of an Italian village who’ve kept their annual tradition of shaping and performing their own original, collaborative theatrical production going strong for the past five decades.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3c5suaL2fTs/WUhvmh82-sI/AAAAAAAABBY/rWP7f6mS6uMRY82v2uT7W905UGN0KnQYQCLcBGAs/s1600/BeachRatsPoster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-3c5suaL2fTs/WUhvmh82-sI/AAAAAAAABBY/rWP7f6mS6uMRY82v2uT7W905UGN0KnQYQCLcBGAs/s200/BeachRatsPoster.jpg" width="133" height="200" data-original-width="960" data-original-height="1440" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">One of the narrative features that I’d been most looking forward to seeing, writer/director Eliza Hittman’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Beach Rats</i>, also ended up being one of my favorite films from this year’s festival. The film follows Frankie, a young working-class guy in Brooklyn who covertly cruises on gay webcam sites online and starts to act on desires that he’s barely begun to articulate to himself. Whenever men online ask him what he likes, he’s unsure how to respond, especially since he’s also pursuing a relationship with a girlfriend whom he meets on a boardwalk under summertime twilight fireworks early in the film.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-L7gzx6aavZI/WUhycYJmuJI/AAAAAAAABBs/aGrgyr9aigY4GKzQBVCtsvs-jx_KPa_YwCLcBGAs/s1600/BeachRatsHarrisDickinson.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-L7gzx6aavZI/WUhycYJmuJI/AAAAAAAABBs/aGrgyr9aigY4GKzQBVCtsvs-jx_KPa_YwCLcBGAs/s200/BeachRatsHarrisDickinson.jpg" width="200" height="113" data-original-width="1600" data-original-height="900" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Frankie’s portrayed by newcomer Harris Dickinson, in a bold, star-making performance that’s multi-layered and undeniably sexy. The rowdy bunch of guys who roam around town alongside him provide colorful company, but Frankie is always the movie’s focus; the camera closely studies him in every scene as the other characters go about their business, a demanding role for any actor to take on. It’s even more demanding in the sense that Frankie is often taciturn and elusive, understandably so given his circumstances. What we learn about him gradually throughout the film is conveyed mostly beneath the surface, through brief glances, quick changes of expression, and tiny looks of exasperation or empathy. I was never bored for a second while watching this actor inhabit the role and found him to be totally transfixing.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GFC8bHmpFeo/WUhykcM90CI/AAAAAAAABBw/PmjT9K_L3iIkl3fk9lK09llukzSYzf6MgCLcBGAs/s1600/BeachRatsBoys.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-GFC8bHmpFeo/WUhykcM90CI/AAAAAAAABBw/PmjT9K_L3iIkl3fk9lK09llukzSYzf6MgCLcBGAs/s200/BeachRatsBoys.jpg" width="200" height="113" data-original-width="600" data-original-height="338" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">As any viewer may predict about a film that features a group of young male upstarts at its center, I wasn’t surprised when the movie swerved into more dangerous territory. I’m sure that some in the audience were also disappointed with the direction in which the film ultimately headed. Although Frankie’s predicament is not approached unsympathetically — he’s trying his best to connect on a deeper level with other men (mostly older guys who won’t know any of his friends) in a social setting that seems to limit his set of options drastically — he also gives in to peer pressure and familial expectations, in an attempt to fit into the masculine constructs that have been presented to him. Even in our post-<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Brokeback Mountain</i>era, I think this particular narrative is still under-told and underrepresented, both in film and literature. I remember being involved for about a year with a guy who grew up in working-class Boston, and so much of Frankie’s character reminded me precisely of him and how conflicted he felt about being bi, or maybe gay, or maybe straight. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Beach Rats</i>deftly demonstrates why our cultural and sexual categories can also become somewhat less reliable in the actual context of individual people’s lives.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ePetslhTUaY/WUhysB9T8-I/AAAAAAAABB0/dxN6BihFiAATOxxiYoBI_FtjnlO7H4C_QCLcBGAs/s1600/BeatrizAtDinner.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ePetslhTUaY/WUhysB9T8-I/AAAAAAAABB0/dxN6BihFiAATOxxiYoBI_FtjnlO7H4C_QCLcBGAs/s200/BeatrizAtDinner.jpg" width="135" height="200" data-original-width="220" data-original-height="326" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Beatriz at Dinner</i>, the latest film directed by Miguel Arteta and written by Mike White, who previously made both <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Chuck &amp; Buck</i>and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Good Girl</i> together, will surely be seen as a timely response to the current class and race divisions in America. Beatriz (an excellent Salma Hayek) is a holistic healthcare worker at a cancer clinic in California, who winds up as the unanticipated guest at a dinner party held by one of her female massage clients after a massage appointment at the client’s swanky mansion. Beatriz is invited to stay for dinner when her car won’t start in her client’s driveway, and also in part because she became close to her client’s family when their teenage daughter received treatment as a patient at the clinic where Beatriz works.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Another guest at the dinner, Doug Strutt (an outright villain played with relish by John Lithgow), is a glowering and powerful real estate developer whose business tactics are widely known for being mercenary and unethical. He’s clearly an analogue for any number of contemporary political and business figures whose greed remains unchecked and unchallenged due to their wealth and their influential positions. Beatriz, a legal immigrant from Mexico, instantly sees Doug Strutt for exactly what he is, and she also feels certain that she recognizes him, even confusing him for a real estate mogul who built a tourist resort in her Mexican hometown and displaced many longtime residents of the community.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZiwaZBtyItg/WUhy2ZkGWAI/AAAAAAAABB4/673qMu7yJmYX0Do8gL5NZ1TrA64wL1V_wCLcBGAs/s1600/BeatrizGuitar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ZiwaZBtyItg/WUhy2ZkGWAI/AAAAAAAABB4/673qMu7yJmYX0Do8gL5NZ1TrA64wL1V_wCLcBGAs/s200/BeatrizGuitar.jpg" width="200" height="132" data-original-width="600" data-original-height="397" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">As expected, the dinner dialogue unfolds at a measured pace with steadily escalating tension, as Beatriz and Doug initiate their verbal sparring match and trenchant arguments heat up. Hayek endows Beatriz’s outlook with a moral gravity that drives the story and pulls the other characters forward. On the surface the film feels fully realistic, though I think it’s equally an allegory, a combination that proved perplexing to some audience members. After the screening that I saw, I overheard some viewers saying that they didn’t really get the film’s ending, which operates as a metaphor for what Beatriz is up against and perhaps shows how she feels about the future. The movie’s final images also connect back to its dreamlike opening scene, framing the film within a context that’s rooted in nature, and also making the movie feel as timeless as it is timely. For all of those reasons, I thought that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Beatriz at Dinner</i> was smarter than it seemed at first glance.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WFO9x_3VHn8/WUhzB5O6aUI/AAAAAAAABB8/JIjFRcQe2zQV5wgn3M16AfyypGAunREQACLcBGAs/s1600/MarshaPJohnsonDoc.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WFO9x_3VHn8/WUhzB5O6aUI/AAAAAAAABB8/JIjFRcQe2zQV5wgn3M16AfyypGAunREQACLcBGAs/s200/MarshaPJohnsonDoc.jpg" width="125" height="200" data-original-width="622" data-original-height="996" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">My favorite documentary from this year’s festival, David France’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Death and Life of Marsha P. Johnson</i>, is a phenomenal follow-up to his 2012 Oscar-nominated documentary <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">How to Survive a Plague</i>, which powerfully explored the ACT UP movement during the 1980s AIDS crisis in New York City. His new documentary examines a very different subject that’s just as fascinating: the life and suspicious death of Marsha P. (for “Pay It No Mind”) Johnson, one of the transgender people of color who courageously stood up and fought back against the police that raided the Stonewall Inn in Greenwich Village in late June of 1969. In the ensuing years, Marsha became one of the key figures in the legend of the Stonewall rebellion. Tragically, she was found drowned in the water of the Hudson River off the Christopher Street piers one morning in July of 1992, and while police dismissively ruled the cause of death as suicide, Marsha’s case was never truly investigated or fully resolved.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hPXtw1EPsk4/WUhzJ2mqOCI/AAAAAAAABCA/VWlMyr1o2csM5fdBibjWgQIIOxE4rbYeACLcBGAs/s1600/VictoriaCruz.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-hPXtw1EPsk4/WUhzJ2mqOCI/AAAAAAAABCA/VWlMyr1o2csM5fdBibjWgQIIOxE4rbYeACLcBGAs/s200/VictoriaCruz.jpg" width="140" height="200" data-original-width="268" data-original-height="383" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The film’s star and tenacious hero is Victoria Cruz, another trans woman of color from the Stonewall era, who was born and raised in a family of eleven children in the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn. Working for the Anti-Violence Project in Manhattan, Victoria re-opens Marsha’s case, which had remained cold for 25 years, in order to dig deeper into its details and determine the true cause of Marsha P. Johnson’s death. When she calls retired police detectives who worked on the case in 1992, she runs into dead ends and refusals to cooperate, but she keeps pushing ahead tirelessly. Upon finally receiving Marsha’s autopsy report, sure enough, “possible homicide” is listed as a potential cause of death. Ominous threats that had been made to Randy Wicker, Marsha’s longtime roommate, also seem to support that possibility.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ik0O22tot3U/WUhzULryPaI/AAAAAAAABCE/YxjkuP7lU9cpco2nVV_4AYv7tbQ5SPosQCLcBGAs/s1600/SylviaRiveraMarshaPJohnson.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Ik0O22tot3U/WUhzULryPaI/AAAAAAAABCE/YxjkuP7lU9cpco2nVV_4AYv7tbQ5SPosQCLcBGAs/s200/SylviaRiveraMarshaPJohnson.jpg" width="200" height="118" data-original-width="281" data-original-height="166" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">What makes David France’s film brilliant is its intricate and engrossing storytelling. The movie functions as a true-crime thriller, detective tale, compelling mystery, and history lesson simultaneously, in addition to its activist stance, which offers an important social justice message about the unfair treatment of trans people in our society. Sylvia Rivera, another trans community icon who led the resistance during the Stonewall Riots, becomes an equal focus during the film’s latter half, as the documentary traces her rise from living homeless on the Chelsea Piers to receiving the wider cultural recognition that she deserved from the LGBT community. I was fortunate to have lunch with Victoria Cruz during the press luncheon on Saturday at the festival, and I’m still blown away by her dedication to the cause of justice in the film. Even when the director of the Anti-Violence Project urges her to focus time and energy on the trans people who face discrimination in the present and will continue to encounter violence in the future, Victoria remains devoted to finding some closure to the memory of Marsha P. Johnson, both for the community and for Marsha’s immediate family.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5KQ0T4hY2LU/WUhzec68YYI/AAAAAAAABCM/lCdaU39nTDYbcR_Sxz8efaOsW3Q0mFEZACLcBGAs/s1600/SpettacoloPoster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-5KQ0T4hY2LU/WUhzec68YYI/AAAAAAAABCM/lCdaU39nTDYbcR_Sxz8efaOsW3Q0mFEZACLcBGAs/s200/SpettacoloPoster.jpg" width="138" height="200" data-original-width="563" data-original-height="818" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">On the themes of community and endurance, I also loved Jeff Malmberg’s and Chris Shellen’s offbeat slice-of-life documentary <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Spettacolo</i>(meaning a spectacle or play, and pronounced similarly to “spectacular”), which takes place in the remote medieval Tuscan village of Monticchiello, where the town’s residents have collectively written and performed a play as themselves every summer for over fifty years. Some of the original performers still appear in the play today, though as the younger generation moves away to cities and more urbane pursuits, the older residents of Monticchiello wonder how much longer their unique tradition can survive. Those anxieties, coupled with ongoing rumblings from the international news, especially news about the ravages of global capitalism, led the group to select a darker theme during the year that the documentary was being made: the end of the world.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fDssxEY20d0/WUhzkt3jBsI/AAAAAAAABCQ/H3ZmNZD-e6MeulJgbi702LbveXnVNST5wCLcBGAs/s1600/SpettacoloDoc.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-fDssxEY20d0/WUhzkt3jBsI/AAAAAAAABCQ/H3ZmNZD-e6MeulJgbi702LbveXnVNST5wCLcBGAs/s200/SpettacoloDoc.jpg" width="200" height="132" data-original-width="1110" data-original-height="735" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The semi-absurdist theatrical production that’s mounted by the troupe each year harkens back to the style of Italian playwrights like Luigi Pirandello. But regardless of the shape that each play takes, under the guidance of a serious and hilarious director who spends his downtime painting visionary watercolors, the main point is that the community creates it together from the material of their own everyday lives. “Our lives became one long play,” says the director early in the film, and some of the actors also comment memorably on what working together throughout the annual production reveals about their communal bond. “We’re 300 people who love each other,” remarks one actor in vintage footage from about 30 years ago, a stark contrast to the kind of public solitude experienced by many who live in cities today. It’s also a startling contrast to the village’s current population of only 136, as noted at the start of the movie. It made me wonder, when is our way of life <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">not</i> under threat of extinction? Nonetheless, the town’s determination to keep its theatrical tradition alive is inspiring at every moment of the film.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RqUSf6pHE-Y/WUhzqduhAmI/AAAAAAAABCU/eel2SEyt2mgr8-tSXa_jqq2ripdIDDtogCLcBGAs/s1600/32PillsPoster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-RqUSf6pHE-Y/WUhzqduhAmI/AAAAAAAABCU/eel2SEyt2mgr8-tSXa_jqq2ripdIDDtogCLcBGAs/s200/32PillsPoster.jpg" width="135" height="200" data-original-width="675" data-original-height="1000" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I was moved in a very different way by <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">32 Pills: My Sister’s Suicide</i>, Hope Litoff’s brave and unsparing meditation on the reasons behind the suicide of her older sister Ruth, who died of an overdose in 2008 at age 42, after a long, heartbreaking history of depression and hospitalizations. A gifted artist and photographer, Ruth left behind an abundance of large-scale photographs of individual flowers and other colorful objects, which saturate the frames of the documentary itself whenever they appear on screen. The images are so vivid and present in those scenes that it’s as if Ruth is speaking directly to us through the photographs, even in her absence.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Hope’s insistent search for meaning in her sister’s struggle takes such an emotional toll on her during the making of the film that she breaks her own sobriety of sixteen years right on camera, in one of the most harrowing moments of confessional cinema that I’ve ever seen. The film is redemptive in the end, too, as Hope mounts “Ruth’s Dream,” an installation of illuminated boxes wrapped in transparencies of Ruth’s photographs on exhibit in the lobby of Bellevue Hospital, a project that Ruth had begun working on herself just prior to her death but was never able to complete. The exhibit and the film are both a testament to the director’s unwavering courage in preserving her sister’s spirit, and I think that the movie will also be a helpful document for those who are navigating grief from the loss of a loved one to suicide.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Zt_cd1SKA9o/WUhzyhV0iUI/AAAAAAAABCY/mpmtA846cQIhHZKkx3LBGG4R4qMOfHIbACLcBGAs/s1600/TomOfFinlandPoster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Zt_cd1SKA9o/WUhzyhV0iUI/AAAAAAAABCY/mpmtA846cQIhHZKkx3LBGG4R4qMOfHIbACLcBGAs/s200/TomOfFinlandPoster.jpg" width="164" height="200" data-original-width="596" data-original-height="726" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Finally, I also enjoyed one beautifully made biopic in this year’s festival, Dome Karukosken’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tom of Finland</i>. I’m sure that this is the only narrative feature film ever to begin and end at Chicago’s popular IML (International Mr. Leather) conference and competition for gay/bi leathermen and the BDSM community. It’s amazing that what occurs between those two bookends in the movie unfolds within the classic period biopic formula. The film follows the rise of famed Finnish visual artist Touko Laaksonen (soulfully portrayed by Pekka Strang), who was later given the pseudonym Tom of Finland by Bob Mizer, the publisher of American beefcake magazine <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Physique Pictorial</i>. Tom of Finland’s drawings depict hyper-sexualized fantasy versions of various uniformed (and un-uniformed) masculine types, from sailors to policemen to motorcyclists, all so outrageously proportioned and perfect that they burst off the page. While the art itself features less in the film than does Laaksonen’s life, including his 28-year relationship with his boyfriend Nipa (played by Lauri Tilkanen), who died in 1981, the film features several actors in military and prison inquisition scenes who look like they’d fit right in with the kind of figures Tom of Finland drew throughout his storied and liberating artistic career.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:DocumentProperties> <o:Template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:Revision>0</o:Revision> <o:TotalTime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:Pages>1</o:Pages> <o:Words>2161</o:Words> <o:Characters>12318</o:Characters> <o:Company>Emerson College</o:Company> <o:Lines>102</o:Lines> <o:Paragraphs>24</o:Paragraphs> <o:CharactersWithSpaces>15127</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:Version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:DontAutofitConstrainedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="276"> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <!--EndFragment--><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2Bye69AHhlU/WUhz9pd2bEI/AAAAAAAABCc/On1YFxfnbtcc72kuSgyLCrVjDlP1GcocwCLcBGAs/s1600/ChloeSevignyAward.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-2Bye69AHhlU/WUhz9pd2bEI/AAAAAAAABCc/On1YFxfnbtcc72kuSgyLCrVjDlP1GcocwCLcBGAs/s200/ChloeSevignyAward.jpg" width="200" height="150" data-original-width="1200" data-original-height="900" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I’ll close with one key moment from the conversation with this year’s Excellence in Acting award recipient, Chloë Sevigny, who was interviewed on stage by deputy director of the Film Society of Lincoln Center, Eugene Hernandez. When he asked Sevigny to name one thing that she loves about acting and one thing that she hates about it, she responded that though she loves getting outside of herself while escaping into a film character, she hates aging as an actress. To help counter the effect that Hollywood can often have on women’s careers, a new record of half the films featured in this year’s Provincetown International Film Festival were directed by women. That’s roughly ten times the percentage of mainstream Hollywood films that are directed by women each year. This crucial kind of social progress reassures me that, despite the challenges faced by filmmakers and creative artists in upcoming years, great cinema will continue to get funded, and lasting art will continue to be made.</span><span style="font-family: Times;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03004111643204359175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5128479313373199891.post-27456773257049785732017-05-14T18:37:00.000-04:002017-05-17T20:42:09.966-04:00Fresh Horses (dir. David Anspaugh, 1988)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bazBB3nabEo/WRjYwkz7e4I/AAAAAAAABAc/GQWDA2F_cYYKJYKTreVtCjZp12OasUK9ACLcB/s1600/FreshHorsesPoster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bazBB3nabEo/WRjYwkz7e4I/AAAAAAAABAc/GQWDA2F_cYYKJYKTreVtCjZp12OasUK9ACLcB/s200/FreshHorsesPoster.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">My first and only time ever on a movie set was for the 1988 film <i>Fresh Horses</i>, which starred Molly Ringwald and Andrew McCarthy. Clearly, <i>Fresh Horses</i> was meant to be a kind of not-quite-sequel to 1986’s <i>Pretty in Pink</i>, though it didn’t come anywhere close to matching its predecessor’s success. <i>Fresh Horses</i> was filmed in and around where I grew up in Cincinnati, Ohio. I was 14-years-old at the time and had been fairly obsessed with John Hughes’ mid-’80s high school dramatic comedies like <i>Pretty in Pink</i> and <i>The Breakfast Club</i>. So I was excited when I read an article in the <i>Cincinnati Enquirer</i>, our hometown daily newspaper, about how <i>Fresh Horses</i> was being filmed in town.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">The only specific filming location that was mentioned in the article, and which sounded like it might be locatable for a 14-year-old kid, was a house on a rolling hillside in Union, Kentucky, across the Ohio River from Cincinnati.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I’d never been to Union, Kentucky, of course, but I figured that it couldn’t be a very big place. Determined to find that house where they were filming, I convinced a friend who was a couple of years older and who had a car to skip school with me one Friday, so that we could drive down to Kentucky. He was up for that and excited about it, too. This was in the fall of 1987, late October as I recall.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">We arrived in Union, Kentucky, by sometime around noon. It was quaint and rural, basically just one long country road through bluegrass hills and fields of horses. Within a few minutes, we spotted the big white house on a hillside, set a little ways off the road. Lighting equipment was set up in metal clusters on the sprawling lawn in front of the house, but there was no activity going on at that point; as the abundance of idle lighting equipment clearly indicated, the day’s filming would commence after sundown. In the meantime, we drove around for a while, had a late lunch at a roadside diner, and returned to the house that evening, once it had gotten dark outside.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">Then something happened that would never happen today in 2017. My friend parked his car in the grass alongside the winding gravel driveway that led to the house, he grabbed a big quilted blanket from the trunk of his car, and we sat beneath a huge tree to watch the movie being filmed from a safe distance. I remember seeing one security officer stationed on the property, a little further up the driveway. He took notice of us, but he didn’t say anything to us. Neither did anybody else. Nobody even approached us at all, perhaps thinking that we had some actual reason for being there. We sat there for hours, in fact, from about seven o’clock until sometime well after midnight.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TPIZ7k9oFV0/WRjZLVi_DAI/AAAAAAAABAg/P0iRo4fz3OkNu60WhJ6vivZJhmJW9NSQwCLcB/s1600/FreshHorsesVHS.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TPIZ7k9oFV0/WRjZLVi_DAI/AAAAAAAABAg/P0iRo4fz3OkNu60WhJ6vivZJhmJW9NSQwCLcB/s200/FreshHorsesVHS.jpg" width="110" /></a><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">During all of those hours, we saw only two scenes being filmed, both exterior scenes on the front porch of the house, and both with Andrew McCarthy. In one scene, he drove a car up to the house and parked, walked slowly up to the porch, peered inside the front door, then stepped off the side of the porch to walk around the side of the house. In the other scene, a fight broke out just inside of the house, between Andrew McCarthy’s character, named Matt Larkin, and some other random tough guy. Then the brawl tumbled out the front door onto the porch, with poor Andrew McCarthy’s character hitting the ground in front of the porch steps. I vividly remember hearing the punctuated shouts of Patti D’Arbanville’s character, Jean, who owned that big party house on the hill, trying to break up the fight.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">Nevertheless, nothing in my experiences as a young filmgoer had prepared me for just how boring and repetitious being on the set of a film would feel. The seeming glamour of Hollywood and the artful deception of edited cinematic narratives had brainwashed me into thinking that film sets themselves would be equally glamorous. The scene of Larkin driving up to the house was filmed at least twenty times, with the movie crew trying to get the right take, and the fight scene on the porch was filmed about thirty times, maybe even more. Andrew McCarthy chain-smoked whenever there was a break between takes. I remember seeing him many years later, portraying Tom Wingfield in Tennessee Williams</span><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">’ play</span><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">&nbsp;</span><i style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The Glass Menagerie</i><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"> at the American Repertory Theater in Cambridge, and catching a glimpse of him chain-smoking yet again, out in the courtyard with the crew members during the intermission.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">Perhaps because of the repetition involved in the filming, and the novelty of the whole experience, visiting that film set is indelibly engraved into my memory. I can replay the entire sequence of events in my mind anytime, like a little cinematic loop itself. It was fun, too, seeing how those two scenes had been incorporated into the film when it was released in theaters towards the end of 1988. Larkin’s little jump off the side of the porch to walk around to the side of the house, which ended right there with each take during the filming, is followed in the movie itself by his intense first kiss with Jewel, Molly Ringwald’s character, right up against the outside wall of that house. This was probably my first actual lesson about how storylines in movies aren’t filmed chronologically. I don’t think Molly Ringwald was even on the set of the film that night.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">The screenplay for <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fresh Horses</i> was adapted from Larry Ketron’s stage play of the same title, and he adapted the screenplay himself. The play starred Suzy Amis as Jewel and Craig Sheffer as Larkin when it premiered in New York in 1986. It’s the story of a well-to-do college student, Larkin, who’s interested in engineering and design (constructing rides like rollercoasters, specifically), and his illicit romantic pursuit of Jewel, a street-smart country girl from across the river, who may or may not even be of age to be dating him. All of that comes out slowly during the course of the film, naturally, and with no little amount of melodramatic tears and formulaic effect. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Fresh Horses</i> is not a great movie, nor even a particularly good one. But that’s part of the reason why I wanted to write about it this many years later. How can a movie that’s not particularly good, and more than a little cheesy at times, still <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">feel</i> like it’s kind of good in retrospect because of how it attaches itself to one’s own youthful memories?<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Gv9i9QjZm-k/WRjZvqryDAI/AAAAAAAABAo/-lKLCOLaJY07KsZzPNbk-Lk3ciICbbGBgCLcB/s1600/AndrewMcCarthyBenStiller.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;"><img border="0" height="127" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Gv9i9QjZm-k/WRjZvqryDAI/AAAAAAAABAo/-lKLCOLaJY07KsZzPNbk-Lk3ciICbbGBgCLcB/s200/AndrewMcCarthyBenStiller.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">Larkin’s sidekick in the film, Tipton, is played by Ben Stiller, who makes a charismatic comedic impression in one of his earliest film roles; he’s cute and expressive and just manic enough. Tipton is meant to be Larkin’s reliable buddy and his social conscience, urging him to be more interested in the attractive college women at a pool party that they attend at a private home, rather than falling for the seductive girl from the wrong side of the tracks that Jewel represents. Larkin is still at that age when his homosocial friendships with other guys carry more weight than his fledgling relationships with women, including the self-righteous rich girl to whom he’s engaged to be married. That’s probably why the film opens with Larkin and Tipton cruising in a speedboat together at nightfall along the banks of the Ohio River, with a widescreen view of the iconic Cincinnati Reds baseball stadium and the Riverfront Coliseum all decked out in lights. Fred Murphy’s cinematography certainly captures Cincinnati’s gorgeous skyline exactly the way I remember it from childhood, as does David Foster’s wistful opening keyboard score, which takes me right back to the late 1980’s like nothing else really could.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-a5jmXlFU_YE/WRjaAMyg-xI/AAAAAAAABAs/YzddECkU5xQBLCrFxQeO_M9WH-CXsDaUwCLcB/s1600/FreshHorsesRailroad.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;"><img border="0" height="184" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-a5jmXlFU_YE/WRjaAMyg-xI/AAAAAAAABAs/YzddECkU5xQBLCrFxQeO_M9WH-CXsDaUwCLcB/s200/FreshHorsesRailroad.png" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">Much of the dialogue from Ketron’s original play translates well to the screen, even powerfully so in intermittent flashes, especially during scenes in a run-down, abandoned railroad shack, where Jewel and Larkin work through the mysteries of their attraction to each other and further seal their bond. Jewel’s given a handful of inventive monologues that cut deeper in those scenes. Although she’s the character who never graduated from high school, she’s the covert brain of the film, as well as its fierce heart, facets of the character that Molly Ringwald more than ably conveys. As Jewel’s name suggests, she’s the magnetic force at the center of the story; other characters simply react to her. She maintains the control, even if she’s still too young and naïve to know what do to with it.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zb3x8f45d28/WRjaMu7wkjI/AAAAAAAABAw/pBIeYsER_s4aF_XEUHxwT5QYhkbbAQrsQCLcB/s1600/ViggoMortensenFreshHorses.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-zb3x8f45d28/WRjaMu7wkjI/AAAAAAAABAw/pBIeYsER_s4aF_XEUHxwT5QYhkbbAQrsQCLcB/s200/ViggoMortensenFreshHorses.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">Later in the film, there’s also a riveting performance by a young, smoldering Viggo Mortensen, who plays Green, the ne’er-do-well husband whom Jewel manages to keep a secret from Larkin until later in the movie. Mortensen appears almost silently at a truck-stop diner mid-way through the film, and his only real speaking scene is for a few important minutes at the movie’s dramatic climax, when Larkin barges into the ramshackle home where Green lives with Jewel, in order to confront the two of them together. The way that Mortensen embodies Green’s cruel sensuality, and the tantalizingly lazy Southern drawl with which he delivers his hushed dialogue, should have rightly convinced anyone watching the movie back then that he would go on to have a major career as a film actor.<o:p></o:p></span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><br /></div></div><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:DocumentProperties> <o:Template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:Revision>0</o:Revision> <o:TotalTime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:Pages>1</o:Pages> <o:Words>1407</o:Words> <o:Characters>8024</o:Characters> <o:Company>Emerson College</o:Company> <o:Lines>66</o:Lines> <o:Paragraphs>16</o:Paragraphs> <o:CharactersWithSpaces>9854</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:Version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:DontAutofitConstrainedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="276"> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <!--EndFragment--><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-blE76rDe_uo/WRjapVYu7RI/AAAAAAAABA0/Zh1S0AX6cBoucZV8QOcNJ-KsD3p0IjjLgCLcB/s1600/FreshHorsesRollercoaster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;"><img border="0" height="149" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-blE76rDe_uo/WRjapVYu7RI/AAAAAAAABA0/Zh1S0AX6cBoucZV8QOcNJ-KsD3p0IjjLgCLcB/s200/FreshHorsesRollercoaster.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">The moment that I remember most often from <i>Fresh Horses</i> is a quiet scene in which Larkin and Jewel walk together beside the tall, criss-crossing wooden beams of a rollercoaster at a closed-down amusement park in winter. The amusement park is called LeSourdsville Lake in Middletown, Ohio, a place that was located not too far from where I grew up in Cincinnati. I always loved amusement parks as a kid, even in the off-season. Recalling the towering structure of the rollercoaster and the image of a tiny couple embracing next to it, in clear contrast to its sheer size and height, I think that the scene works almost as a kind of metaphor for the immensity of time itself, and our own small space at the margins in the scope of it.</span><span style="font-family: &quot;times&quot;;"><o:p></o:p></span></div></div>Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03004111643204359175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5128479313373199891.post-19024796972152315332017-02-26T15:33:00.005-05:002018-02-13T23:13:16.549-05:00Ferron, Driver (EarthBeat! Records, 1994)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4nanK7YN9Dw/WLM8QfVM2fI/AAAAAAAAA_o/TW0d815myi0P5KkfMnuH1KR3f5M1DHYbQCLcB/s1600/FerronDriver.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-4nanK7YN9Dw/WLM8QfVM2fI/AAAAAAAAA_o/TW0d815myi0P5KkfMnuH1KR3f5M1DHYbQCLcB/s200/FerronDriver.jpg" width="200" height="197" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">Very few records in my CD collection feel like they contain the entire life of the artist. Canadian singer/songwriter and lesbian icon Ferron’s 1994 album <i>Driver</i> is one of those records, and it’s also among the best. I’m surprised when I realize that it came out nearly 23 years ago now. It’s one of just a handful of CDs that I’ve returned to on a frequent basis since its release, and in a way it feels as if it never quite leaves my consciousness. The twelve tracks on <i>Driver</i>, the same number of hours on the clock and months in a year, seem to have been written and recorded to trace the passage of time itself, meaning that they’ve also been ingrained into the passage of time for me since they were first put out into the world.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">I vividly remember hearing Ferron perform at a concert in Provincetown about 15 years ago now. The venue was the sanctuary of the Unitarian Universalist Meeting House, a beautiful old New England church that’s right in the center of town. I was feeling a little bit sleepy that evening, so after the lights went down at the start of the show, I decided to go all the way to the back of the venue and stretch out alone in one of the pews there. I already knew the songs from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Driver</i> very well, so whenever she played one of those songs, I allowed myself to semi-doze as my mind floated along on Ferron’s guitar and gently rough-hewn voice (accompanied by the impeccable musicianship of her touring partner, Shelley Jennings), though it felt less like I was dozing and more like I was traveling.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">Fittingly, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Driver</i> is about the necessary tension between traveling and settling down, between solitude and companionship. Relationships are at the center of the album, including the relationship between the singer and herself, between the singer and her own history. The album’s first track, “Breakpoint,” opens through quietly atmospheric instrumentation and a line that’s both a warning and a seduction: “Let’s turn the outside way down low and play with fire.” No matter how tight the bond is when two people meet and fall in love (“To fall from a plane would make more sense, but who is so logical,” Ferron jokes), every relationship takes place across a kind of fault line, “your storm and my storm dissolving at breakpoint.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">And it’s at the breakpoint between people that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Driver</i>really departs on its second track, “Girl on a Road,” long known as Ferron’s most autobiographical song. She ran away from home at fifteen, with only a shopping bag of possessions: “I said goodbye to no one and in that way faced my truth.” In addition to hinting at an early understanding of her gender and sexuality, her truth is mainly an artistic one. “I wanted to turn beautiful and serve Eternity,” she sings, “and never follow money or love with greasy hands, or move the earth and waters just to make it fit my plans.” The song is clearly written not just as a memory, but also as an inspiration for all girls who left home at a young age, something that I’ve always related to as a young gay man who did the same.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-eI7uUsfasRA/WLM8iQLd4iI/AAAAAAAAA_s/bKmcCYt1i_AO_CBOWZ3iEf288XF0zUVxACLcB/s1600/FerronDriverCD.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-eI7uUsfasRA/WLM8iQLd4iI/AAAAAAAAA_s/bKmcCYt1i_AO_CBOWZ3iEf288XF0zUVxACLcB/s200/FerronDriverCD.jpg" width="197" height="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">I think Ferron’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Driver</i> has appealed to me for so long because it’s equal parts street smarts and deep wisdom. That potent combination is captured perfectly by a clever turn in “Cactus,” my favorite track on the album: “You’re young one day but youth is rude, and while you watch it walks right past. But hey, then you get your chance to think like me.” <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Driver</i> is filled with such pinpoint lyrical observations, so precise that comparisons to Leonard Cohen and Bob Dylan don’t really do them justice. “There’s a rhythm to the highway to match the rhythm of your fears.” “There’ll always be gorgeous babes around, it’s the nature of towns at midnight.” “And the coldest bed I’ve found does not hold one but it will hold three.” “Still the odds fall sweet in favor to an open heart.” “An open heart is a moving train.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">Openness to diverse musical styles is abundantly evident on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Driver</i>, too. Although most of the songs walk a traditional folk line (including the contemplative “Independence Day” and wistful “A Name for It”), jazzy piano interludes find their way into songs like the sexy, playful “Call Me,” a soaring soprano saxophone solo drifts through the midsection and close of “Borderlines,” and Ferron breaks out into true country hoedown mode on the celebratory “Love Loves Me,” complete with accordion, hooting yelps, and choral clapping. The prologue and epilogue of “Sunshine” and “Sunshine’s Lament” also feature classical viola and piano balladry, in order to convey appropriately the heartbreak of those songs.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:DocumentProperties> <o:Template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:Revision>0</o:Revision> <o:TotalTime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:Pages>1</o:Pages> <o:Words>775</o:Words> <o:Characters>4419</o:Characters> <o:Company>Emerson College</o:Company> <o:Lines>36</o:Lines> <o:Paragraphs>8</o:Paragraphs> <o:CharactersWithSpaces>5426</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:Version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:DontAutofitConstrainedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="276"> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <!--EndFragment--><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Driver</i>’s closing track and final destination, “Maya,” is named after Ferron’s daughter and begins with an indelible image: “Last night I dreamed Joni Mitchell cut her hair and changed her named to Gaia.” The song is about keeping house with a lover and raising a child together, while also growing a symbolic garden. The singer poetically reconsiders what has brought her to this place: “It was always worry dolls and love’s back door and haunted halls to the ocean floor, where I’d lick my wounds behind a rust-warped door and try to prove love couldn’t find me.” “Maya” addresses the significance of the album’s title as well. “It seems like I’ve been driving now for a long, long time,” Ferron sings. Then she whispers, “Oh, the dance of it all,” and a swaying melodica carries the song to its fading end.</span><span style="font-family: &quot;times&quot;;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03004111643204359175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5128479313373199891.post-78198536525389044672017-01-01T19:50:00.003-05:002017-01-11T22:13:15.302-05:00Five Favorite Films of 2016<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Z4124If7w3c/WGmhFGGl_bI/AAAAAAAAA-Y/uyfWu44shOEWX29uXJYsIeXhK406NYhjgCLcB/s1600/SingStreet.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Z4124If7w3c/WGmhFGGl_bI/AAAAAAAAA-Y/uyfWu44shOEWX29uXJYsIeXhK406NYhjgCLcB/s200/SingStreet.jpg" width="122" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0d0d0d; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">If lists of our favorite things are like tiny blueprints of our personalities, then my favorite films of 2016 certainly indicate a good deal about me. All five movies that I’ve selected to write about below, in looking back on all the films that I saw this past year, are quiet and fairly independent; with a couple of exceptions, they’re films that relatively few people watched at cinemas. Accordingly, the cinema itself, as digital technology becomes more and more widespread, seems less and less like the place where movies will eventually be housed with each year that passes. If that’s indeed the case someday, I can’t overstate how much I’ll miss the particular experience of filmgoing and its significant place in the culture.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0d0d0d; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Because they intersected so perfectly at the crossroads of movies and music, I loved John Carney’s two previous films,&nbsp;<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Once</i>&nbsp;and&nbsp;<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Begin Again</i>, so I anticipated enjoying his latest film&nbsp;<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sing Street</i>&nbsp;equally as much. What I didn’t foresee was just how deeply his new movie would resonate with me. This is mostly due to its ’80s throwback sensibilities, as well as its superbly crafted musical numbers, which were composed by Gary Clark, who scored an international hit called “Mary's Prayer” all the way back in 1987 with his band Danny Wilson. The title&nbsp;<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sing Street</i>&nbsp;is a clever play on Dublin’s Synge Street, as in Synge Street Christian Brothers School, where the film’s protagonist, Conor (Ferdia Walsh-Peelo), is a student and aspiring musician from a working-class family.<o:p></o:p></span><br /><span style="color: #0d0d0d; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9Jq4kg8lcjc/WGmhN4xybpI/AAAAAAAAA-c/3OPZuObBRR4crkMOnbA8eTEbo7SFjNFSACLcB/s1600/SingStreetCast.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="112" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-9Jq4kg8lcjc/WGmhN4xybpI/AAAAAAAAA-c/3OPZuObBRR4crkMOnbA8eTEbo7SFjNFSACLcB/s200/SingStreetCast.jpg" width="200" /></span></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #0d0d0d;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Conor puts together a rag-tag band mostly to impress Raphina (Lucy Boynton), an older girl who catches his eye while standing across the street from his school. What follows is the closest any director has come to matching the late John Hughes’ classic mid-’80s teen comedies, a feat that many, many directors before have tried and failed to fully achieve. The reason why Carney succeeds, in addition to the wonderful performances of the young cast that he’s assembled, is a matter of tone, that bittersweet balance of sentimentality and authentic emotion, tempered by nostalgic longing.</span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0d0d0d; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">While the growing romantic relationship between Conor and Raphina seems central on the film’s surface, it’s almost equally focused on the relationship between Conor and his older brother, Brendan (Jack Reynor), an earnest deadbeat who kindles and guides Conor’s offbeat artistic interests and ambitions. This culminates in one of most moving, visionary endings of any narrative feature from the past year, powerfully accompanied by Adam Levine’s gorgeous song “Go Now.” Several other songs in the film, and the scenes in which they appear, are indelibly catchy and memorable, especially “Up,” “A Beautiful Sea,” “To Find You,” and the phenomenal “Drive It Like You Stole It.”</span><br /><span style="color: #0d0d0d; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ECp4-n4zXtU/WGmhSy8CaXI/AAAAAAAAA-g/Pi0oaoK7bhAXyii86jhEsXEE4ftmL4rPQCLcB/s1600/ManchesterByTheSea.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="189" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ECp4-n4zXtU/WGmhSy8CaXI/AAAAAAAAA-g/Pi0oaoK7bhAXyii86jhEsXEE4ftmL4rPQCLcB/s200/ManchesterByTheSea.jpg" width="200" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #0d0d0d;">The complete opposite of&nbsp;</span><i style="color: #0d0d0d;">Sing Street</i><span style="color: #0d0d0d;">&nbsp;in its contained, downbeat energy, Kenneth Lonergan’s&nbsp;</span><i style="color: #0d0d0d;">Manchester by the Sea</i><span style="color: #0d0d0d;">&nbsp;concerns another working-class family, this time in an oceanside town on the north shore of Massachusetts. The film is masterfully constructed from an extended series of flashbacks that often shift abruptly in ways that rely on the formidable strength of the screenwriting and the audience’s intelligence. Having seen the film in New York on Thanksgiving, I admired how its exploration of family dynamics over time felt genuine in its representations of dysfunction; it refuses to offer any simple resolutions.</span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0d0d0d; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Lee Chandler (Casey Affleck, who should win the Oscar for Best Actor) is a repairman for several apartment buildings just outside of Boston. He’s called back to his hometown when his older brother Joe (Kyle Chandler) dies from heart failure. Joe expects Lee to care for his teenage son Patrick (Lucas Hedges), a task that Lee’s not fully ready to accept as an uncle, though he does accept it in his own distinct, low-key way, the same way that Lee does everything else. We find out only gradually why Lee is so low-profile and hesitant to return to his hometown, where he’s considered somewhat of a pariah.</span><br /><span style="color: #0d0d0d; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qEcZmU52Xvw/WGmhYtwEnqI/AAAAAAAAA-k/cjvu6PEFiXg37vG3LW13WkJp-srwKMoWgCLcB/s1600/CaseyAffleckManchester.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="113" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-qEcZmU52Xvw/WGmhYtwEnqI/AAAAAAAAA-k/cjvu6PEFiXg37vG3LW13WkJp-srwKMoWgCLcB/s200/CaseyAffleckManchester.jpg" width="200" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #0d0d0d;">Three or four scenes in this film are destined to become classics in cinematic history. This is partly due to Lonergan’s finely wrought script, which moves in ways that make his actors bravely ride along on his lines, as well as the complexity of the film’s performances. In a pivotal scene that takes place in a police station, Affleck navigates the thinnest margin of dialogue while the camera bears directly down on him. Michelle Williams, as Lee’s ex-wife Randi, matches him moment for moment during the film’s overwhelming emotional climax. The power of&nbsp;</span><i style="color: #0d0d0d;">Manchester by the Sea</i><span style="color: #0d0d0d;">&nbsp;is that of restraint which comes cascading down after waiting for most of the movie.</span></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #0d0d0d;"><br /></span></span></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lKVp_D7d9hs/WGmhdW6actI/AAAAAAAAA-o/HERg6qJfAYwYYWNu3VydXEN6ySfsqz4lACLcB/s1600/EverybodyWantsSome.jpg" image anchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-lKVp_D7d9hs/WGmhdW6actI/AAAAAAAAA-o/HERg6qJfAYwYYWNu3VydXEN6ySfsqz4lACLcB/s200/EverybodyWantsSome.jpg" width="156" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #0d0d0d;">To be honest, I’m surprised that Richard Linklater’s&nbsp;</span><i style="color: #0d0d0d;">Everybody Wants Some!!</i><span style="color: #0d0d0d;">&nbsp;was nearly as enjoyable for me as his previous film,&nbsp;</span><i style="color: #0d0d0d;">Boyhood</i><span style="color: #0d0d0d;">, especially considering that they’re such different movies. Set in 1980 at a Texas university the weekend before a new school year begins,&nbsp;</span><i style="color: #0d0d0d;">Everybody Wants Some!!</i><span style="color: #0d0d0d;">&nbsp;takes place mostly in the frat house and nightclubs frequented by a fun and rowdy bunch of college baseball players, and a little bit on the baseball field during the team’s first batting practice of the season later in the film. At the center of the story is freshman arrival Jake Bradford (Blake Jenner), and the assortment of guys that surrounds him could not be hotter or more hilarious. Just how much fun did the people in charge of hair and costumes have while getting these actors coiffed and all dressed up? Quite a lot, apparently.</span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0d0d0d; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt;">Imagine revisiting your college sports years and precisely revising every friend and memory, and that’s pretty much what Richard Linklater has done here. The jokes come quick as lightning, and the actors inhabit their wildly comedic roles as robustly as in any drama. Giving a rundown of each character’s “type” would belittle how smart the performances are, and it would also ruin the sweetness of discovery for anybody reading this who goes on to watch the film for the first time. Some viewers (and some hardcore Linklater fans) have complained that the film meanders too much, dull and plotless. But having a plot isn’t really the point. The story is in the characters themselves, an approach that’s quite true to life. Things don’t happen to us as much as&nbsp;<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">people</i>&nbsp;happen to us. Then things do or don’t happen to those people.</span><br /><span style="color: #0d0d0d; font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; font-size: 10.0pt;"><br /></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-65j8U92R58g/WGmhkf3lFtI/AAAAAAAAA-s/VGAJ5D2MGRItTgbOPv5xECf_L7uwvtFtgCLcB/s1600/TylerHoechlin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="137" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-65j8U92R58g/WGmhkf3lFtI/AAAAAAAAA-s/VGAJ5D2MGRItTgbOPv5xECf_L7uwvtFtgCLcB/s200/TylerHoechlin.jpg" width="200" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #0d0d0d;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">What happens amongst the people in this movie is one long, steady stream of competitive one-upmanship. Whether it’s ping-pong, video games, indoor basketball, darts, or knuckle flicking, these guys openly admit that they have to be the winners at everything they do, the kind of things that I remember doing with my older brother as a kid growing up in Ohio. John Waters has said that this is the gayest movie made by a straight director this past year, and he’s totally right about that. The guys chatter non-stop about cocks and butts, accompanied by plenty of playfully homoerotic narcissism as they all check out their own in the mirror, then go diving into a creek wearing only their jockstraps. Also, seeing McReynolds (Tyler Hoechlin, a former baseball player himself) in his at-bat stance as he splits baseballs in half by swinging an axe at them remains my favorite movie image of 2016.</span></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #0d0d0d;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-U2awnYaXyoY/WGmhqCOR7MI/AAAAAAAAA-w/Ksov2tg3avM-_1gjdVZeoVENmWtCfFCpwCLcB/s1600/Paterson.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-U2awnYaXyoY/WGmhqCOR7MI/AAAAAAAAA-w/Ksov2tg3avM-_1gjdVZeoVENmWtCfFCpwCLcB/s200/Paterson.jpg" width="180" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #0d0d0d;">Jim Jarmusch’s&nbsp;</span><i style="color: #0d0d0d;">Paterson</i><span style="color: #0d0d0d;">&nbsp;is a movie that I knew I would love from the very first moment I read about it several months ago. Adam Driver plays the title character, a bus driver named Paterson who lives in Paterson, New Jersey, and reads William Carlos Williams’ poetry book&nbsp;</span><i style="color: #0d0d0d;">Paterson</i><span style="color: #0d0d0d;">, among other 20th-century American poets like Frank O’Hara. Paterson is also a poet himself. He jots down lines from poems in a notebook before his shift most mornings, he thinks through and revises poems in his mind while he’s driving on his bus route, and he keeps a writing routine in a small book-nook below the basement stairs in the boxy little home that he shares with his wife, Laura (Golshifteh Farahani). Laura might be described as having an inspiringly persistent creative streak. She paints designs all around the inside of their house each day, including on the cupcakes that she bakes to sell at the local weekly outdoor market.</span></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #0d0d0d; font-size: 10.0pt;">Paterson</span></i><span style="color: #0d0d0d; font-size: 10.0pt;">&nbsp;is grounded in routines. It proceeds sequentially through the days of the week and the routines of each day, methodically and touchingly. We become familiar with the things that make Paterson and Laura (and their English bulldog, Marvin) content. But even though there’s a certain enchantment to be found in those familiar routines, that’s only the topmost layer of the movie. The strangeness just underneath it is what sets the whole film and its characters afloat. For instance, after Laura tells Paterson early in the movie about a dream in which she gave birth to twins, Paterson starts seeing pairs of twins everywhere he goes, an unsettling pattern that continues throughout the movie yet is mysteriously never explained or resolved.</span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #0d0d0d; font-size: 10.0pt;"><br /></span></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-R9H_xi9zS6I/WG2Vr_DVcyI/AAAAAAAAA_M/V9G9YPPpYkoUFhubQ9kqpOukcSg_3s0uQCLcB/s1600/PatersonAdamDriver.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-R9H_xi9zS6I/WG2Vr_DVcyI/AAAAAAAAA_M/V9G9YPPpYkoUFhubQ9kqpOukcSg_3s0uQCLcB/s200/PatersonAdamDriver.jpg" width="200" height="146" /></a></div><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #0d0d0d;">When I first heard that Oklahoma-born New York poet Ron Padgett had written Paterson’s poems for the film, I knew that it would be exactly the right fit. Ron Padgett’s continually colloquial, laidback language translates seamlessly into Paterson’s own poems, which we hear read by Adam Driver with a halting resonance as they appear in handwritten script on the screen. The poems are consistent with the rest of Paterson’s world and the even balance of things that make him happy: overhearing passengers’ conversations on the bus when he’s driving, taking Marvin out for his ritual walk at night, stopping in for a beer at his favorite neighborhood bar. He’s like the famous Passaic River waterfalls in Paterson that he loves to sit silently before and watch, always flowing down gently and quietly, never changing shape or pace. Likewise, the relaxed pace and rhythm of&nbsp;</span><i style="color: #0d0d0d;">Paterson</i><span style="color: #0d0d0d;">&nbsp;are the film’s most distinctive features, and they’re totally Jarmusch’s own.</span></span></span><br /><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #0d0d0d;"><br /></span></span></span><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6Vo3a_9rcZo/WGmhzopMvOI/AAAAAAAAA-4/OK0RPJ-Dr5ILCEfrzpQxEU5OQv2lJ4aKgCLcB/s1600/UncleHoward.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-6Vo3a_9rcZo/WGmhzopMvOI/AAAAAAAAA-4/OK0RPJ-Dr5ILCEfrzpQxEU5OQv2lJ4aKgCLcB/s200/UncleHoward.jpg" width="154" /></span></a></div><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><span style="color: #0d0d0d;">Jim Jarmusch also happened to be the executive producer of my favorite documentary of this past year, Aaron Brookner’s&nbsp;</span><i style="color: #0d0d0d;">Uncle Howard</i><span style="color: #0d0d0d;">, a rich and sensitive portrait of his late uncle, the filmmaker Howard Brookner, a gay man who died of AIDS in 1989. I already wrote about that film in greater detail in my annual review of the Provincetown International Film Festival back in June, and now I’ve seen the movie three times in total. Its depiction of Howard Brookner’s life, persona, and achievement in the three films that he completed in his short lifetime continue to linger with me at the start of 2017, just as the words of the film’s closing song by The Pretenders, “Hymn to Her,” still echo in my mind now: “They will keep on speaking your name / Some things change / Some stay the same.”</span></span></span></div>Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03004111643204359175noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5128479313373199891.post-6285948461406443402016-11-12T00:00:00.001-05:002016-11-13T11:58:57.885-05:00Leonard Cohen, "Chelsea Hotel No. 2" (Columbia Records, 1974)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UlrtaVMpzS8/WCahklNzcBI/AAAAAAAAA9I/aUH7oLrSE6szKWIRbrw0me1HwgrM3QZKgCLcB/s1600/LeonardCohen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="141" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UlrtaVMpzS8/WCahklNzcBI/AAAAAAAAA9I/aUH7oLrSE6szKWIRbrw0me1HwgrM3QZKgCLcB/s200/LeonardCohen.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I first paid close attention to Leonard Cohen’s song “Chelsea Hotel No. 2” in the summer of 2012, at an outdoor concert by Rufus Wainwright at the harbor-side pavilion here in Boston. I’d heard Cohen’s own version of the song before then, as well as Lloyd Cole’s upbeat guitar-pop rendition, with the Dylanesque cadences of its delivery, on 1991’s Leonard Cohen tribute CD <i>I’m Your Fan</i>. Rufus performed the song (which is also included on his album <i>Want Two</i>) as a duet with Cohen’s son Adam, the show’s opening act.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Hearing the lyrics sung by an unabashedly gay performer like Wainwright, who also happens to be the biological father of one of Leonard Cohen’s grandchildren, is probably what made me take notice. The song fits Rufus’s persona perfectly and bends to suit a different context while always retaining its original shape. That’s probably one quality that makes a song truly great; it lends its flexibility to a wide variety of performers who cover it, without sacrificing the integrity of the initial creation. Joni Mitchell’s “A Case of You” is another song that does this always, and I’ve never heard a bad interpretation of it.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Chelsea Hotel No. 2,” of course, is lodged deep in rock mythology, a memory of Cohen’s overnight liaison with Janis Joplin. Like many of his best songs, it’s steeped in an intense yet also casual longing. The song’s setting, grand yet bohemian, old-school yet contemporary, arranges its manifold legendary associations around the opening lyric: “I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel.” Our memories are contained by the ghosts of the spaces in which the remembered experiences first occurred, and when we return to those spaces, which continue to change over time, we bring the memories back to those spaces with us. Cohen’s memory of Joplin is a snapshot (or short film) of their time together in the Chelsea Hotel, and any subsequent visit, or even a photograph of the place, might revive the memory of her again. The lyrics are like a Cavafy poem that a straight man would write. Cohen certainly knew Cavafy’s writing because a song on his 2001 album <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ten New Songs</i>is based on one of Cavafy’s poems. Cohen himself published almost as many books of poetry as the number of albums he recorded.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The lyrics of “Chelsea Hotel No. 2” are constructed on the shifting surfaces of desire: “You were talking so brave and so sweet, / Giving me head on the unmade bed / While the limousines wait in the street.” Romantic, sexual, disarrayed, and glamorous, the images clash and complement each other in a way that’s both timeless and timelessly cool. The present-tense verb “wait” in the line about the limousines idling in the street clearly plays with this idea, suspending the desire and the memory itself eternally in time, even though Cohen is singing about the distant past.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Those were the reasons and that was New York.” The music business had brought them there and brought them together (“We were running for the money and the flesh”), for better or worse. It was the late 1960s. The years between then and the song’s release in 1974 would be years of tremendous loss, fallout from a war escalated beyond all control and a long litany of drug-related deaths, facts that further fixate the erotic memory. “And that was called love for the workers in song, / Probably still is for those of them left.” A night of great sex is what a musician would expect, but it’s still a kind of love, then and today, but especially then, at the height of the sexual revolution. Joplin was just one of many famous musicians who died young at age 27, Cohen was among the survivors, and the phrase “those of them left” takes on a whole new meaning now, with the majority of musical artists struggling harder to stay afloat and keep creating in our digital era.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Joplin’s departure in the song is a relaxed shrug and a heartbreaking refusal. We know the story, and it doesn’t need to be said outright, so it’s sublimated instead:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“Ah but you got away, didn’t you babe,<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">You just turned your back on the crowd.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">You got away, I never once heard you say,<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I need you, I don’t need you,<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I need you, I don’t need you,<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">And all of that jiving around.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I’ve always wondered if the repetition of “I need you, I don’t need you” is more than just an example of the lovers’ bickering and wavering that they never got around to, but rather a kind of conversational response, with the singer’s “I don’t need you” as a counterpoint, a forlorn way of addressing the memory itself. It’s as though he’s saying, just like we didn’t need the emotional games that we never had a chance to play, I don’t need to remember you this way. It’s also as if Joplin is saying that she never needed what the world could never really give her.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QleCBT5o2BQ/WCah0f9lgvI/AAAAAAAAA9M/69TTcZnfMwgVJzNLWRl3nrZ8Y7_GJTRmwCLcB/s1600/LeonardCohenGuitar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-QleCBT5o2BQ/WCah0f9lgvI/AAAAAAAAA9M/69TTcZnfMwgVJzNLWRl3nrZ8Y7_GJTRmwCLcB/s200/LeonardCohenGuitar.jpg" width="153" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Then in the next verse, Cohen’s memory again overtakes the singer’s distant stance like a gentle wave washing back over him: “You told me again you preferred handsome men, / But for me you would make an exception.” It’s such an interesting turn, this unusual point of bonding; they don’t fit in with the image-conscious rock stars surrounding them, and that difference is one thing that attracted them to each other. “And clenching your fist for the ones like us / Who are oppressed by the figures of beauty” suggests another layer of meaning as well, in that beauty is one of the most enduring themes of popular music and art, yet physical beauty itself is never fairly distributed and doesn’t even last for those to whom it’s granted. In the end, however, art prevails anyway, with a sly inward smile: “You fixed yourself and said, ‘Well, never mind, / We are ugly, but we have the music.’”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The song’s denouement covers more ground in four lines than some songwriters’ entire catalogs, as the singer connects cultural history with his own relationships and memories:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">“I don’t mean to suggest that I loved you the best,<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I can’t keep track of each fallen robin.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I remember you well in the Chelsea Hotel,<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">That’s all, I don’t even think of you that often.”</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">At first the image of those “fallen robins” might seem a little sexist, drawing on the tradition of comparing women to birds, until remembering the orange color of Janis Joplin’s hair. And again, the early disappearance of so many young musicians in that era was tragically persistent enough that one could conceivably lose count, a notion that Cohen seems willing to let go of, whereas the cultural fixation on celebrities who died young would only become more fervent, nostalgic, and exploitative as generations passed. Nevertheless, the song’s closing line, “I don’t even think of you that often,” registers as quietly true, yet at the same time isn’t true at all. The entire song is a detailed resurrection of an unforgettable memory. Permanently cast in the mold of popular music, that memory is continually repeated, continually relived, both as a poem and a song, a private reverie and a public statement, revived and consumed, revived and consuming.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:DocumentProperties> <o:Template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:Revision>0</o:Revision> <o:TotalTime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:Pages>1</o:Pages> <o:Words>1080</o:Words> <o:Characters>6158</o:Characters> <o:Company>Emerson College</o:Company> <o:Lines>51</o:Lines> <o:Paragraphs>12</o:Paragraphs> <o:CharactersWithSpaces>7562</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:Version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:DontAutofitConstrainedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="276"> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <!--EndFragment--><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Despite this willful repetition — lift and move the needle back to replay the track, click refresh on the YouTube video — the song’s rich internal signifiers are also half-empty now. Janis Joplin is long gone, Leonard Cohen is just recently gone, and the old Chelsea Hotel is gone now, too, closed for renovations, soon to be upscaled and gentrified, no longer an infamous bohemian enclave but your typical downtown luxury establishment. The only figures left in the song’s insular hotel room will be us, just as Leonard Cohen intended for it to be someday.</span><span style="font-family: &quot;times&quot;;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03004111643204359175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5128479313373199891.post-14580698805610967212016-07-23T16:37:00.000-04:002016-08-13T14:02:32.239-04:00The Music of Scritti Politti<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ky72HMuKuzo/V5PUUTtu96I/AAAAAAAAA8g/G37Srt6BAfsRBSE2SiepdBE4mtyDJC1RwCLcB/s1600/ScrittiCupid.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-ky72HMuKuzo/V5PUUTtu96I/AAAAAAAAA8g/G37Srt6BAfsRBSE2SiepdBE4mtyDJC1RwCLcB/s200/ScrittiCupid.jpg" width="200" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">My favorite album of all time is Scritti Politti’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cupid &amp; Psyche 85</i>, and my favorite band of all time is Scritti Politti. Because of that, I’ve wanted to write about Scritti Politti’s music (and the man behind the band, Green Gartside) for a very long time now, but for some reason, I found that I could never quite bring myself to do so. It’s like my love for Scritti Politti’s music runs so deep that my mind was unwilling or unable to process that admiration in writing, or to make my affection for their music a more public declaration. So rather than writing the kind of detailed post that I usually write, I figured I’ll try instead to write about finding myself unable to write about Scritti Politti, which will really end up being a meditation on how I came to love the kind of music that I do, along with a few of the reasons why I love it.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">I first heard Scritti Politti’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cupid &amp; Psyche 85</i> thirty years ago now in 1986, at the age of thirteen, when I was on vacation with my family at a hotel in Florida, on a beach somewhere near St. Petersburg. Also staying at our hotel were two long-haired sisters, about three or four years older than I was, who kept <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cupid &amp; Psyche 85 </i>and one other album on constant rotation while sunning themselves beside the hotel swimming pool. (The other album was Robbie Nevil’s 1986 self-titled debut, another record that I still love today.)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">From that very first listen — I think the first track I heard on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Cupid &amp; Psyche 85</i> was either “Perfect Way” or “Hypnotize” — I was totally mesmerized by the songs, by their deft beats, sophisticated lyrics, and a sonic sweetness that lingered somewhere between musical generations. I’d been raised on late ’70s and early ’80s pop radio in Cincinnati, Ohio, but the songs I heard those two sisters playing poolside on their boombox changed everything for me. The world in that sunlit Florida air tilted and shimmered a bit, then shifted gradually back into focus.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hUBCpVTs3sQ/V5PUapBuX8I/AAAAAAAAA8k/lN4P_RY8fKYxT_PgqIHpxvs0-cpgRSR9QCLcB/s1600/ScrittiProvision.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hUBCpVTs3sQ/V5PUapBuX8I/AAAAAAAAA8k/lN4P_RY8fKYxT_PgqIHpxvs0-cpgRSR9QCLcB/s200/ScrittiProvision.jpg" width="200" /></span></a></div>This happened at a very particular moment in the history of popular music. The playful sounds of synthesizers had recently begun to liberate the idea of who could make music professionally and how. The same young people who’d discovered that loophole then mastered what exactly they could do with those sounds and ventured to see just how far they could carry them. Also, the technological innovation of digitizing music and distributing it widely on compact discs had started to completely revolutionize the music industry and change its game rules for good.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div> <div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">It helped that Green Gartside, the founding force (and voice) of Scritti Politti, was quietly taking stock of all this from across the Atlantic. Sure, the ’80s pop music scene in central London was already off and running, but Green was in love with the innovations of American R&amp;B, a love that explains the reggae-influenced slinkiness of “The Word Girl,” the laidback propulsion of “Absolute,” and the blazing danceclub-on-fire velocity of “Wood Beez (Pray Like Aretha Franklin).” By the time he arrived at 1988’s equally fantastic album <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Provision</i>, both Miles Davis and Roger Troutman would also be in the mix on a pair of unforgettable collaborations.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:DocumentProperties> <o:Template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:Revision>0</o:Revision> <o:TotalTime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:Pages>1</o:Pages> <o:Words>565</o:Words> <o:Characters>3222</o:Characters> <o:Company>Emerson College</o:Company> <o:Lines>26</o:Lines> <o:Paragraphs>6</o:Paragraphs> <o:CharactersWithSpaces>3956</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:Version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:DontAutofitConstrainedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="276"> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <!--EndFragment--><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XogR9QPPd8Y/V5PUgP7tTgI/AAAAAAAAA8o/jgnDgRiEoLQJjGT_nsDFZEVq-lMlD5vqgCLcB/s1600/GreenGartside.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-XogR9QPPd8Y/V5PUgP7tTgI/AAAAAAAAA8o/jgnDgRiEoLQJjGT_nsDFZEVq-lMlD5vqgCLcB/s200/GreenGartside.jpg" width="146" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: Times; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I don’t want to dwell on Green’s go-rounds with the major-label music business or his ensuing semi-reclusiveness, because he’s stayed around, as smart as ever, and made five albums the way that he wanted to make them. (I have a good feeling that a sixth album might be on the way soon, too.) I do want to dwell for just a moment, however, on one of my favorite live concert memories ever, when I got to see Scritti Politti perform here in Boston ten years ago, in November of 2006. I never thought that would happen, especially not after two decades of loving a band who’d remained so low profile. But when a shy Welsh white guy can have a dance floor full of black women over 50 getting down to the bass beats of “Wood Beez,” you know that he’s doing something right.</span><span style="font-family: times;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03004111643204359175noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5128479313373199891.post-28045999078075766282016-06-20T18:30:00.003-04:002017-01-01T14:46:29.821-05:0018th Annual Provincetown International Film Festival (June 15th - 19th, 2016)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Bnrd7u4EPuE/V2hsDt97XtI/AAAAAAAAA4c/qBKWFvcwnHMLHtLMVBBCBtuh440riE6cwCLcB/s1600/PIFFlogo2016.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-Bnrd7u4EPuE/V2hsDt97XtI/AAAAAAAAA4c/qBKWFvcwnHMLHtLMVBBCBtuh440riE6cwCLcB/s200/PIFFlogo2016.jpg" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Before a film screening halfway through this year’s Provincetown International Film Festival, one of the festival’s programmers who was introducing the film was happy to let the audience know that it would be a light movie, and she also mentioned that filmgoers at the festival sometimes ask why so many movies in the festival feel sad or dark. I thought it was great to hear this acknowledged, and I’m also someone who’s quite glad that the films in the festival are often sad and dark because the world itself is often sad and dark. While escapism at the cinema clearly has its advantages, good films tend to reflect our culture and society directly, facing difficult truths head-on and bravely exploring the more intractable or mysterious aspects of human experience. Almost all of the seventeen films that I saw in this year’s festival fit that description, and I’m grateful for it.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hHBQILRG_6Q/V2hsr5saGkI/AAAAAAAAA4k/lG9neYxxj9cB4XEpo_gZwlVtwz061-S5QCLcB/s1600/UncleHoward.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-hHBQILRG_6Q/V2hsr5saGkI/AAAAAAAAA4k/lG9neYxxj9cB4XEpo_gZwlVtwz061-S5QCLcB/s200/UncleHoward.jpg" /></span></a></div><div style="text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I was fortunate to have already seen my favorite film from this year’s festival, Aaron Brookner’s moving documentary <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Uncle Howard</i>, at the Wicked Queer film festival in Boston just a few months ago. I absolutely loved the movie then, and it definitely rewarded me further on a second viewing, giving me a chance to notice lots of clever interconnections that hadn’t been apparent to me during my first viewing. Last summer here on my blog, I reviewed <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Smash Cut</i>, Brad Gooch’s terrific memoir about the same subject, the late filmmaker Howard Brookner, Gooch’s boyfriend of ten years who died of AIDS in 1989, just before his 35th birthday. This documentary about Howard’s life and times was produced by Jim Jarmusch, a film school classmate of Howard’s at NYU and the sound man on Brookner’s first film, a mid-’80s documentary about William Burroughs. But what makes <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Uncle Howard</i> so special is the personal perspective bestowed upon the film’s subject by its director, Howard Brookner’s nephew Aaron.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ZnDLZCIrZG4/V2hszSvdE_I/AAAAAAAAA4w/N43hJdFwwak600DZhnNmeeVk2TvOikzmwCLcB/s1600/HowardBrooknerDoc.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-ZnDLZCIrZG4/V2hszSvdE_I/AAAAAAAAA4w/N43hJdFwwak600DZhnNmeeVk2TvOikzmwCLcB/s200/HowardBrooknerDoc.png" /></span></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">We see plenty of footage of Aaron as a little boy in the film, growing up with his uncle Howard and beginning to idolize him over time. Howard’s early death made him enigmatic to Aaron, understandably, a huge loss to be pursued and a kind of puzzle to be solved. One striking image late in the film shows the adult Aaron pacing around a large circle of all of the archival artifacts that he’s collected from his uncle’s life: photographs, newspaper clippings, magazine articles, reels of film. The movie’s ultimate message is that memory is the only thing that really makes our stories, along with someone’s willingness either to preserve the memories or piece them back together again. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Uncle Howard</i> is pretty much the most gorgeous re-assemblage imaginable, and its closing scene, composed of perfectly selected and placed found footage, is my favorite ending of any movie so far this year.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gZa9tw5bSYw/V2hs9Q0jrwI/AAAAAAAAA5A/hnyJgWmHsFEZ0B-HiUDBq-3EAq17_tjaACLcB/s1600/Tickled.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-gZa9tw5bSYw/V2hs9Q0jrwI/AAAAAAAAA5A/hnyJgWmHsFEZ0B-HiUDBq-3EAq17_tjaACLcB/s200/Tickled.jpg" /></span></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The documentary that I’d been anticipating most in the festival, David Farrier’s and Dylan Reeve’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tickled</i>, certainly did not disappoint. Farrier, a bisexual journalist in New Zealand, has made a career of finding offbeat slice-of-life and human interest stories, and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tickled</i> began when he came across “competitive endurance tickling” fetish videos online, which feature cute athletic guys tickling each other fully or partially clothed. Of course, these videos have a massive following among tickling enthusiasts as a kind of very soft-core pornography. Though it seems like those videos will be the focus of the movie, the tickle torture turns out to be just a lure into a much deeper exploration of power, money, and control, all via harassment and humiliation of the videos’ participants at the distant hands of a manipulative quasi-genius whose identity remains a secret until nearly the end of the film. Farrier’s masterful shift of tone into truly suspenseful territory is what makes this film so watchable.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PKcZikN4xs0/V2htCVPKr0I/AAAAAAAAA5I/4q1_C9XmOkwMerVoKlH-XsBjvLyZI_aewCLcB/s1600/TickledStill.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-PKcZikN4xs0/V2htCVPKr0I/AAAAAAAAA5I/4q1_C9XmOkwMerVoKlH-XsBjvLyZI_aewCLcB/s200/TickledStill.jpg" /></span></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Farrier himself quickly becomes the target of homophobic taunting and harassment just after he discovers and contacts the makers of the tickling videos, produced by a nebulous entity called Jane O’Brien Media. The documentary’s filmmakers gradually learn that Jane herself doesn’t exist at all but is merely an avatar in a long line of assumed identities for a mastermind with an addiction to hot (and financially vulnerable) young guys tickling each other, as well as a relentlessly vindictive streak whenever he’s even slightly crossed by anyone in his path. The psychological motivations behind these behaviors surface briefly late in the movie, and its one weakness might be that Farrier gives us only a sad glimpse into our antagonist’s childhood, yet isn’t really able to explore it further. Nevertheless, the rest of the film gathers its suspenseful energy from delving as deep as it does into the darker side of human (or inhuman) nature. Farrier’s courage and tenacity in pursuing the story to its twisted end are highly commendable.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GojhRxgoOGw/V2htKFmOlEI/AAAAAAAAA5Q/P4vuVuiF-9o90pWqt3P97XQMx8gW8456wCLcB/s1600/LazyEye.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-GojhRxgoOGw/V2htKFmOlEI/AAAAAAAAA5Q/P4vuVuiF-9o90pWqt3P97XQMx8gW8456wCLcB/s200/LazyEye.jpg" /></span></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Another film that I was quite excited to see in the festival was Tim Kirkman’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lazy Eye</i>, my favorite narrative feature in this year’s festival. I reviewed Kirkman’s earlier film <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Loggerheads</i> here on my blog several years ago, and that film remains one of my favorite movies of all time. Like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Loggerheads</i>, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lazy Eye</i>also quietly follows a gay storyline, this time in a finely crafted two-hander that’s solidly built from its resonant screenplay and dialogue. Dean, an artist turned graphic designer, lives in Los Angeles and owns a weekend home in the desert near Joshua Tree. One night he receives an out-of-the-blue email from Alex, with whom he was romantically involved 15 years earlier when both men were living in New York City, until Alex disappeared from Dean’s life without a single word of explanation.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tHbMKd2l5uU/V2htQNgrJlI/AAAAAAAAA5g/c8ctkLoP0ogKZT6JomT2OpqVTNNjl8bqwCLcB/s1600/LazyEyeStill.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-tHbMKd2l5uU/V2htQNgrJlI/AAAAAAAAA5g/c8ctkLoP0ogKZT6JomT2OpqVTNNjl8bqwCLcB/s200/LazyEyeStill.jpg" /></span></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Reluctantly (and not so reluctantly from a sexual standpoint), Dean invites Alex to join him for a reunion weekend out in the desert. The tension escalates and wanes in ways that I won’t divulge here, though I can say that I related to the two men’s situation on an immediate and sometimes heartbreaking level. I think most gay men have lived through the kind of relationship and loss of a relationship that Dean and Alex share; Kirkman’s ear and eye are attuned to every small detail, in a way that’s reminiscent of Andrew Haigh’s wonderful film <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Weekend</i> from a few years ago. I think <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lazy Eye</i> speaks to my own generation of gay men just as well as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Weekend</i> did, perhaps even more fittingly in our current era of gay marriage. What do we lose if we opt out of that new social privilege? Will our memories of former boyfriends and potential husbands transform over time into a long line of regrets, and if so, then what should we do with those regrets?<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JMvYMdbbeoc/V2htY24Y8HI/AAAAAAAAA5o/liG3vdaxHPUc0bzs38NJZ_f3A926fQrwwCLcB/s1600/LongWayNorth.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-JMvYMdbbeoc/V2htY24Y8HI/AAAAAAAAA5o/liG3vdaxHPUc0bzs38NJZ_f3A926fQrwwCLcB/s200/LongWayNorth.png" /></span></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Long Way North</i>, an animated feature film by Rémi Chayé, was just as emotionally affecting as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lazy Eye</i>, but in completely different ways. The movie, voiced in English, has the look of beautifully hand-drawn Japanese anime in the tradition of Studio Ghibli. Set in the late 19th-century, the story follows a 15-year-old Russian girl, Sasha, whose grandfather is an Arctic explorer who doesn’t return home from his latest expedition. His great ambition was to plant the first Russian flag at the North Pole, so Sasha is able to figure out by studying Arctic maps that he left behind what her grandfather’s approximate location might have been when he went missing.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WEmIej-pJ-8/V2htdkrJ-uI/AAAAAAAAA5w/WJE_aMijBsY_P24e0bHLjzzOL7Kzs5xJwCLcB/s1600/LongWayNorthStill.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WEmIej-pJ-8/V2htdkrJ-uI/AAAAAAAAA5w/WJE_aMijBsY_P24e0bHLjzzOL7Kzs5xJwCLcB/s200/LongWayNorthStill.jpg" /></span></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The rest of the film is a gripping adventure tale, one that could convincingly be told only through the medium of animation. The climate of the Arctic is too inhospitable and treacherous for a live-action film crew to take on, and since CGI is basically animation anyway, why not just go with a full-on animated feature? The film’s payoff is in its extended action sequences: the Russian ship breaking its way through Arctic ice, nearly running aground, the sailors digging and blasting through the entrapping sheets of the frozen sea with dynamite, triggering an avalanche that even further endangers their ship. These scenes and images escalate the genre of animated film to a new and different level. I found myself anxiously shouting “No!” aloud at least twice during that segment of the movie, something I’m certain that I’ve never done before while viewing a cartoon. It’s best to leave the film’s ending undescribed here; I will say, however, that the movie’s climax and resolution are elegantly conveyed, while also remaining understated and Zen-like, despite Sasha’s intensely dramatic circumstances.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3TMRN61soTk/V2htjZncTQI/AAAAAAAAA58/4tfS1aQhP2cdsL6rpIZxyto4VlturALkACLcB/s1600/PoliticalAnimals.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-3TMRN61soTk/V2htjZncTQI/AAAAAAAAA58/4tfS1aQhP2cdsL6rpIZxyto4VlturALkACLcB/s200/PoliticalAnimals.jpg" /></span></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">One of the documentaries that tied for the HBO Audience Award at this year’s festival, Jonah Markowitz’s and Tracy Wares’ <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Political Animals</i>, is also well-worth mentioning. The film traces the careers of four lesbian legislators in the state of California: Sheila Kuehl, Carole Midgen, Christine Kehoe, and Jackie Goldberg. Collectively, these women were on the vanguard of gay rights and totally ahead of their time, boldly and tirelessly advocating for legal protections for LGBTQ students in public schools, as well as passing early domestic partnership bills. It addition to compiling compelling footage of their impassioned and movingly personal arguments presented before often homophobic and pro-religion fellow legislators, the film is also an informative vehicle for demonstrating how the legislative process actually works. We watch as bills fail to pass by being as little as one vote short of a majority, and then we see how these women change their uncooperative colleagues’ minds by presenting skillful logic in the context of our evolving culture, just as leaders of the civil rights movement courageously did in previous decades. I teach a course called <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sexuality and Social Change </i>at the university where I work, and I will definitely plan to show this film in class when I offer the course in future semesters.<o:p></o:p></span></div><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-d4SzYZZ_fwk/V2htqWDuD4I/AAAAAAAAA6E/6DCK-aiLwtQeIIgmzP6Ywl4h_dZ5JfK9ACLcB/s1600/Ribbons.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-d4SzYZZ_fwk/V2htqWDuD4I/AAAAAAAAA6E/6DCK-aiLwtQeIIgmzP6Ywl4h_dZ5JfK9ACLcB/s200/Ribbons.jpg" /></span></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Finally, I really enjoyed one short film in the festival, which screened alongside <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Uncle Howard</i>, Brandon Cordeiro’s poignantly nostalgic <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ribbons</i>. Cordeiro is a young filmmaker who was raised in Provincetown, so watching his 8-minute short at this particular film festival, in a town that I’ve visited frequently for many years, made it even more special. Based on one of Brandon’s own memories of his mother taking him to an oceanside AIDS memorial at the beach in Provincetown back in 1997, the short sweetly recreates a young boy’s (and future gay man’s) entirely innocent response to the social tragedy of the AIDS crisis, while also providing a snapshot of the LGBTQ community’s wide-ranging strength at a particularly painful and devastating point in our history. The title image of long, colorful ribbons streaming in the wind on the beach, inscribed with handwritten tributes to loved ones lost to AIDS, has been a feature of the annual Swim for Life fundraising event in Provincetown since its inception; just as memorable is Cordeiro’s luminous rendition of Joni Mitchell’s “Circle Game” at the end of the film, sung by the director himself.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:DocumentProperties> <o:Template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:Revision>0</o:Revision> <o:TotalTime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:Pages>1</o:Pages> <o:Words>1673</o:Words> <o:Characters>9537</o:Characters> <o:Company>Emerson College</o:Company> <o:Lines>79</o:Lines> <o:Paragraphs>19</o:Paragraphs> <o:CharactersWithSpaces>11712</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:Version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:DontAutofitConstrainedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="276"> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--><!--EndFragment--><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4Fek0CidYKU/V2huFsBJWKI/AAAAAAAAA6g/zNFblRCVnnwtxTSK6ke1l58QzzyodSQAwCLcB/s1600/CynthiaNixon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: justify;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><img border="0" src="https://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4Fek0CidYKU/V2huFsBJWKI/AAAAAAAAA6g/zNFblRCVnnwtxTSK6ke1l58QzzyodSQAwCLcB/s200/CynthiaNixon.jpg" /></span></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">At the ceremony for honorees, Excellence in Acting Award recipient (and lesbian icon) Cynthia Nixon gave a heartfelt acceptance speech, in which she spoke of how much she’d loved her first visit to Provincetown to attend this year’s festival. She also mentioned what a relief it was to be in such a peaceful, accepting place after last week’s tragic shooting at the gay nightclub Pulse in Orlando, Florida, and lamented that such a catastrophe could still befall us now. Her closing words about Provincetown and this pivotal moment in LGBTQ history will be my closing words, too, because they’re abundantly evident in the films that I’ve chosen to review: “How good it is to be here, and to see how far we’ve come.”</span><span style="font-family: &quot;times&quot;;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03004111643204359175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5128479313373199891.post-47293897898140090892016-04-30T19:17:00.001-04:002016-05-01T15:32:42.625-04:00The Music of Prince and Paisley Park (Warner Bros. Records, 1985 - 1993)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FGV_8SnFhj0/VyU50SJDSrI/AAAAAAAAA3s/c5KXihtXIccJhhTPJ47XIyVeDa2aT-tIACLcB/s1600/PaisleyParkLogo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FGV_8SnFhj0/VyU50SJDSrI/AAAAAAAAA3s/c5KXihtXIccJhhTPJ47XIyVeDa2aT-tIACLcB/s200/PaisleyParkLogo.jpg" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">Like many other pop music fans worldwide, I’ve been listening to the songs of Prince a lot since his sudden death earlier this month. From some of my earliest childhood memories onward, I have so many strong associations with the music that he tirelessly recorded and produced throughout the 1980s. Among my first memories of having fun on my own as a kid are my totally vivid recollections of skating to “1999,” “Let’s Go Crazy,” “Raspberry Beret,” and “When Doves Cry” at a roller rink in my hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio, the same roller rink where I’d later land my first job as a DJ at age 16. The DJ booth at the far corner of the skating rink was completely covered in royal blue shag carpet. Because I was younger than the other DJs, I worked just the Saturday afternoon shift, and I always included Prince’s hits in my mix, while projecting his music videos on the opposite wall. Prince’s “Little Red Corvette” remains one of my favorite songs of all time to this day, the only song that I ever sing at karaoke.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">Prince’s own albums, an awesome trove of music that people will be studying for many decades to come, are easiest to focus on, but I’ve long been more interested in his side projects and the more obscure songs that he wrote and produced for other artists on his Paisley Park label over roughly eight years, beginning in 1985 and continuing through 1993, just prior to the label’s closure due to disputes with Warner Bros. Records. Although some of the songs recorded by those other Paisley Park artists were second-tier numbers that Prince had recorded as rough demos himself in his younger years (or failed to shop out to big-name acts like Michael Jackson and Madonna), they provide an important key to understanding his overall aesthetic, both from a musical and business standpoint.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UYpi1m9pSaw/VyU6U4UNSrI/AAAAAAAAA4E/G02gPa8EjTEpSX2F_qiTFWnjlXtYKALpgCLcB/s1600/TheFamily.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-UYpi1m9pSaw/VyU6U4UNSrI/AAAAAAAAA4E/G02gPa8EjTEpSX2F_qiTFWnjlXtYKALpgCLcB/s200/TheFamily.jpg" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">The self-titled album by The Family, one of the first releases on Paisley Park in 1985, was Prince’s early experiment in jazz/funk fusion, the musical style to which he’d return in earnest on the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Madhouse 8</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Madhouse 16</i> albums a couple of years later. The Family was led by Paul Peterson, who closely approximated Prince’s vocals and later released solo albums as St. Paul, and Susannah Melvoin, the twin sister of Wendy Melvoin of the duo Wendy &amp; Lisa, Prince’s longtime backup singers. Other members of The Family included frequent Prince collaborators Jellybean Johnson on drums and Eric Leeds on saxophone and flute. With the exception of the fantastically moody track “River Run Dry,” which was written by drummer Bobby Z of Prince’s band The Revolution, Prince composed all of the other songs on the album.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">The Family’s biggest claim to fame, “Nothing Compares 2 U,” would go on to become an international phenomenon for Sinéad O’Connor in 1990. As sung by St. Paul Peterson, the song is a soulful New Wave-influenced ballad, a synthpop hymn to independence in the wake of heartbreak. Several other cuts on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Family</i> are equally notable, especially the outstandingly funky opener “High Fashion” and the pulsating ode to eroticism “Screams of Passion.” The album and its two singles failed to attract much commercial attention at the time of their release, but <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Family</i> is now a highly sought-after rarity for collectors of Prince’s catalog.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Yh3OwMvToIo/VyU6Q7irFCI/AAAAAAAAA4A/luFPVN2BlB8RrYzFS5pBVFxSQRuqYZkxwCLcB/s1600/JillJones.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Yh3OwMvToIo/VyU6Q7irFCI/AAAAAAAAA4A/luFPVN2BlB8RrYzFS5pBVFxSQRuqYZkxwCLcB/s200/JillJones.jpg" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">Another highly sought-after Paisley Park rarity is Jill Jones’ self-titled 1987 debut album, which Prince wrote and produced nearly in its entirety. Jones got her start in the music business as a backup vocalist for the late Teena Marie, who was her cousin, and whose career also happened to be managed by Jones’ mother. Jones later appeared in the music videos for “1999” and “Little Red Corvette,” as well as Prince’s feature-length films <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Purple Rain</i> and <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Graffiti Bridge</i>. Her debut album is endowed with a spiky funk edge that’s as convincing as anything else Prince recorded, with lyrics and a vocal delivery as sensual as later Prince hits like “Diamonds and Pearls” and “Pink Cashmere.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">None of the three singles released from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Jill Jones</i>, the driving “Mia Bocca,” clever “G-Spot,” or jazzy “For Love,” gained any sort of foothold on the charts, the kind of expenditure without profit that began to cause a rift to develop in Warner Bros. Records’ relationship with Prince and Paisley Park. Tellingly, the songs all still sound amazing today, regardless of their lack of mainstream success in the late 1980s, when the volume of records being released worldwide was far too high for anybody to keep up with. Interestingly, the songwriting on two of the album’s best tracks&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">—&nbsp;the pensive “Violet Blue” (dedicated to Elizabeth Taylor and titled for the color of her eyes) and the uptempo “My Man,” both intended to be sung from a woman’s perspective&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">—&nbsp;is credited solely to Jill Jones in the liner notes, although Prince wrote all eight of the album’s songs himself.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cmG_M80xptU/VyU6GtAUzFI/AAAAAAAAA34/-VpcqxjhkIAATNFsNUylasEDiy-zZQfjQCLcB/s1600/TajaSevelle.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-cmG_M80xptU/VyU6GtAUzFI/AAAAAAAAA34/-VpcqxjhkIAATNFsNUylasEDiy-zZQfjQCLcB/s200/TajaSevelle.jpg" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">Prince contributed only two songs to Taja Sevelle’s self-titled 1987 debut album on Paisley Park, which was distributed by Warner Bros. imprint Reprise Records. A more pop-oriented affair than much of Prince’s other output for Paisley Park, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Taja Sevelle</i> was also a departure commercially, competing with the likes of Madonna and Stacey Q during the year of its release. The singer whom Taja Sevelle (born Nancy Richardson) most resembled and carved out a path for was Mariah Carey, perhaps, though without the towering vocal prowess that Carey displayed on her first two albums.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">The two tracks that Prince offered to Taja’s debut project (otherwise produced by Chico Bennett) were “Wouldn’t You Love to Love Me?” and “If I Could Get Your Attention,” both of which he’d recorded earlier versions of himself; each Prince demo is easy enough to find with a quick search online. If <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Taja Sevelle</i> and its four singles yet again failed to find a widespread audience either on radio or on dance floors of the era, the album nonetheless meshes well with the rest of Paisley Park’s diverse roster, striking an appealing balance between R&amp;B, funk, and mainstream crossover pop.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UZRxnKv1QdU/VyU6BpmAfHI/AAAAAAAAA30/0bc3s69VpQIQCd7I6srk-nPIC3LkMqfbACLcB/s1600/ThreeOClockVermillion.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://1.bp.blogspot.com/-UZRxnKv1QdU/VyU6BpmAfHI/AAAAAAAAA30/0bc3s69VpQIQCd7I6srk-nPIC3LkMqfbACLcB/s200/ThreeOClockVermillion.jpg" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">For a fairly radical departure in 1988, Paisley Park released Los Angeles-based band The Three O’Clock’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Vermillion</i>, featuring just one song penned by Prince, the whimsically catchy “Neon Telephone.” No doubt, Prince had caught wind of the band because of their pivotal role in founding L.A.’s punk-lite music scene that was known as the Paisley Underground. This similar naming was only a coincidence, but I can imagine that Prince didn’t want anybody else infringing on his trademark, so he sent his entourage out to investigate. Fortunately, he liked what he heard and then signed the band for one album. I would also guess that another Paisley Underground-related act, The Bangles, scored their massive hit “Manic Monday” due to this coincidence; Prince wrote that song for The Bangles under the pseudonym Christopher. (His birth name was Prince Rogers Nelson.)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">Fronted by singer Michael Quercio and guitarist Jason Falkner, The Three O’Clock made for an unusual but not entirely unexpected fit in the Paisley Park oeuvre. The songs’ instrumentation is playful and grandiose at once, suggesting an alternative to most of the plinking ’80s keyboard fare that was on heavy rotation back in those days. The album’s diverse styles traverse all eras of music in which Prince himself was interested. “When She Becomes My Girl” harkens back to ’50s doo-wop groups; “Love Explosion” sounds like an updated version of a ’60s surfing beach bash; “Through the Sleepy Town” floats through a ’70s hallucination-induced haze; and “Ways of Magic” is still waiting to be the soundtrack centerpiece of an ’80s John Hughes movie revival.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-V6FCcJdrqXg/VyU59cpyN2I/AAAAAAAAA3w/0lHmjEmRGsg-hDhWeWz1AcuZEGypNeOfACLcB/s1600/MavisStaplesTimeWaits.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-V6FCcJdrqXg/VyU59cpyN2I/AAAAAAAAA3w/0lHmjEmRGsg-hDhWeWz1AcuZEGypNeOfACLcB/s200/MavisStaplesTimeWaits.jpg" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">Prince decided on a perfectly sensible return to R&amp;B form in 1989 when he wrote and produced the majority of the songs on gospel legend Mavis Staples’ Paisley Park debut, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Time Waits for No One</i>, as well as on her 1993 Paisley Park follow-up, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Voice</i>. Staples’ vocal texture and range gave Prince an entirely different palette to work with, and her inspirational reputation also liberated him to write about subject matter that was noticeably distinct from his previous records. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Time Waits for No One</i>maintains a clear sonic through-line from his earlier work, with songs crafted from electronically derived funk and sly dance-club beats. The themes are alternately dark (as on the title track and “20th Century Express”) and light (“Interesting,” “Jaguar,” and “The Old Songs”); there's a contemporaneous quiet-storm groove bestowed on the album’s ballads. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Voice</i>, while more gospel-inflected overall, also integrates elements of New Jack Swing, a style popular on R&amp;B songs in the early ’90s, notably on a cut like the upbeat “Melody Cool.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">The most astonishing aspect of all this: the albums that I’ve written about here represent only a small fraction of the total amount of music that Prince created for Paisley Park, and he created all of it within the span of a single decade. That must mean his life was nothing but wall-to-wall music, all day long, every single day, for the whole duration of that period in time, the same way that the most highly revered classical musicians like Mozart must have lived.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:DocumentProperties> <o:Template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:Revision>0</o:Revision> <o:TotalTime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:Pages>1</o:Pages> <o:Words>1377</o:Words> <o:Characters>7854</o:Characters> <o:Company>Emerson College</o:Company> <o:Lines>65</o:Lines> <o:Paragraphs>15</o:Paragraphs> <o:CharactersWithSpaces>9645</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:Version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:DontAutofitConstrainedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="276"> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <!--EndFragment--><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;"><a href="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-e4BWJ6qoF6Y/VyU6LPZjS_I/AAAAAAAAA38/aHONpYd_4m0kg5ic4qg_EF6j4dq_UqDsACLcB/s1600/Prince.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://2.bp.blogspot.com/-e4BWJ6qoF6Y/VyU6LPZjS_I/AAAAAAAAA38/aHONpYd_4m0kg5ic4qg_EF6j4dq_UqDsACLcB/s200/Prince.jpg" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: &quot;trebuchet ms&quot; , sans-serif;">Prince’s prolific body of work for Paisley Park also doesn’t include the many songs that he wrote for artists on other labels during the same timeframe. One particular Prince song that comes poignantly to mind at this sad point in time is “With This Tear,” a moving ballad that Celine Dion recorded for her self-titled 1992 sophomore album, with a passionate vocal crescendo that’s ripped straight out of the stratosphere.</span><span style="font-family: &quot;times&quot;;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03004111643204359175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5128479313373199891.post-83320267286424562532016-01-31T01:45:00.000-05:002016-01-31T01:59:51.927-05:00Garth Greenwell, What Belongs to You (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2016)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FMoc-u_DMHM/Vq2sxD4MXaI/AAAAAAAAA0U/O2rPpWc2U4Q/s1600/WhatBelongsToYou.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-FMoc-u_DMHM/Vq2sxD4MXaI/AAAAAAAAA0U/O2rPpWc2U4Q/s200/WhatBelongsToYou.jpg" /></a></div> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:DocumentProperties> <o:Template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:Revision>0</o:Revision> <o:TotalTime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:Pages>1</o:Pages> <o:Words>653</o:Words> <o:Characters>3723</o:Characters> <o:Company>Emerson College</o:Company> <o:Lines>31</o:Lines> <o:Paragraphs>7</o:Paragraphs> <o:CharactersWithSpaces>4572</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:Version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:DontAutofitConstrainedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="276"> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i>What Belongs to You</i>, Garth Greenwell’s powerful and heart-rending debut novel, often seems to inhabit an earlier era. Take out the cell phones and laptop Skype sessions, and this story of an American expatriate teacher and his ongoing, tumultuous encounters with a Bulgarian hustler named Mitko would feel like something that Rimbaud and Verlaine might have experienced in their own place and time. While there’s plenty of redemption to be found in the book, it’s also relentlessly and unapologetically austere in stretches, both in its intentionally spare narrative movement and its explorations of the cities and landscapes of Bulgaria.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">But overall, <i>What Belongs to You</i>is far more dedicated to exploring the inner lives of its characters, which is to say that it’s a novel about human relationships, about our troubling, visceral connections and inevitable disconnections. So much of the book depends on Mitko’s magnetism — for the novel to succeed, we have to feel as compelled by him as the narrator is — and Greenwell draws him as an enticing and ultimately unforgettable personality. This is not an easy task for any writer to accomplish. The author honed the first of the novel’s three sections from his 2011 novella that focused on the same two characters; from the moment Mitko first appears, cruising alongside the narrator in the basement bathroom of Sofia’s National Palace of Culture, his aura is equally riveting in this longer book.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Greenwell’s prose is long-limbed and ambitious. His paragraphs span two or three pages at times, and the novel’s experimental second section is a single paragraph that unwinds for over forty pages. It’s not only a way of immersing the reader in the narrator’s thoughts and descriptions, but also of leveling down the high-risk subject matter. As long as we’re caught up in the writing itself, then there’s no chance to judge or second-guess the action. We’re implicated in what’s happening as much as the narrator is himself, as the sporadic storms of Mitko’s attention drift (or jolt) in and out of the narrator’s daily world.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Part of what makes Mitko’s mystery lodge in the reader’s mind is how little of his past we’re shown. Early in the novel, when the narrator invites Mitko back to his apartment, Mitko scrolls through photographs of his younger self on a website. Although the pictures were taken only a couple of years earlier, “I was shocked by the difference in their faces, the man in the image and the man beside me,” the narrator thinks; “he looked like a nice kid, a kid I might have had in class at the prestigious school where I teach.” How far Mitko had fallen after turning to a life of drinking, prostitution, and homelessness pulls the narrator closer to his dangerous orbit, deepening the desire to possess and understand him, and creating a divide that will become impossible for Mitko to cross. After tagging along with the narrator and one of his friends for dinner, Mitko says, “I want to live a normal life,” before holding out his hand for money as they part ways.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">What exactly makes a normal life? For most people, it’s money and routine work, which Mitko never has and seemed destined not to have. Love is a key ingredient, too, for those who are lucky enough to find it, or have it bestowed upon them by their families. “Normal” might also mean “moral” in this instance. Yet one of the great strengths of Greenwell’s book is its lack of judgment where morality is concerned. In the universe of his novel, it’s more important to document whatever occurs, to show the way the world is, which grants his writing a kind of lapidary realism as well as psychological intensity.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Kkm-efoTJ1k/Vq2sr18-X5I/AAAAAAAAA0M/7PhzDP2--Ds/s1600/GarthGreenwell.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Kkm-efoTJ1k/Vq2sr18-X5I/AAAAAAAAA0M/7PhzDP2--Ds/s200/GarthGreenwell.jpg" /></a></div>The best and most realistic moments in Greenwell’s novel are those when lives and relationships suddenly pivot and change irreversibly: a violent backhand across the narrator’s face, an innocent boyhood erection deeply unwanted by the person who prompted it, a father’s blunt homophobic rejection of his son. These moments of cruelty arise in the narrative like punches or shocks, fittingly, with a language of precision that re-creates exactly what it feels like to live through such experiences.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Although I’ll avoid giving away any plot details, I will say that the final fifty pages of the book, which I’d saved until I was ready to read them, are pure art, a feat made possible by the careful intricacy of everything that’s come before. I read them straight through to the end. The words were often blurred with tears, and I was grateful to be moved.</span><span style="font-family: Times; font-size: 14pt;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><!--EndFragment-->Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03004111643204359175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5128479313373199891.post-27907168757212726452015-12-20T00:17:00.002-05:002016-02-11T21:22:20.346-05:00Five Favorite Films of 2015<div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0d0d0d;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Judging from my five favorite movies of 2015, or the five films that stayed with me the most, this has clearly been a somewhat unusual year for cinema. Genres like animation and outer space adventure tales, which I’ve previously enjoyed but never taken too seriously, suddenly offered films that left me thinking more deeply than they had before. Two of my favorite movies of the past twelve months were box office hits, rare for the films that appeal to me the most during any given year. It makes sense in a way, as global capitalism marches on, that there’s a gratifying balance to be found between the blockbusters and the small independent movies; some talents will trickle up, while others will trickle down.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0d0d0d;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LizN3FQaUiM/VnY0Hsmu6HI/AAAAAAAAAzE/ga05RT5HfM4/s1600/LostRiver.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-LizN3FQaUiM/VnY0Hsmu6HI/AAAAAAAAAzE/ga05RT5HfM4/s200/LostRiver.jpg" /></a></div>Ryan Gosling’s directorial debut, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lost River</i>, which was booed by the audience and trashed by critics when it premiered at the Cannes Film Festival in 2014, is a film that almost nobody saw this year for that reason. Its cinematic release was extremely limited. The movie showed in only three theaters in New York and Los Angeles and grossed just over $45,000 in the US. Fortunately, I happened to be in New York the one week that the movie screened at the Angelika Film Center there. Although many have accused Gosling of ripping off David Lynch (and yes, Lynch’s films obviously influenced the movie’s elliptical style), Gosling’s shy brand of coolness is stamped all over the movie.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0d0d0d;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The narrative of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lost River</i> is intentionally slim: a young man named Bones (Iain De Caestecker, handsomely approximating Gosling himself) strips copper from abandoned urban buildings and sells it to help support his kid brother and his mother (Christina Hendricks), who ends up in a rather interesting line of work herself. They’re trying to save the house that they’re about to lose. Several subplots emerge: Bones has a quasi-romance with a neighbor (Saoirse Ronan), gets pursued by a towering, brutal bully (Matt Smith), and discovers a flooded town that explains the movie’s title. The scrappy characters and dreamlike, frequently transfixing images, underscored by Johnny Jewel’s pulsating electronic soundtrack, mean more than the sum of those storylines.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0d0d0d;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The result is a very American product (by a Canadian-born director) that’s both contemplative and phantasmagoric, combining the grotesque surrealism of writers like William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor with the hypervisual verve of a graphic novel. Coincidentally, I watched the film immediately after I saw the fun and riveting horror flick <i>It Follows</i> at the same theater. Both movies were filmed in Detroit, and both use that legendary location’s current decrepitude and ruined grandeur to sad and exhilarating effect, another element that makes <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lost River</i> feel distinctly American to me.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0d0d0d;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-g756itfH964/VnY0QDLFDZI/AAAAAAAAAzM/m6GMARSfrYU/s1600/Spotlight.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-g756itfH964/VnY0QDLFDZI/AAAAAAAAAzM/m6GMARSfrYU/s200/Spotlight.jpg" /></a></div>The most important film of 2015 is Tom McCarthy’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Spotlight</i>. I saw it when I was at a conference in Chicago, but it’s set here in my home city of Boston. Following a team of investigative reporters at the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Boston Globe </i>who won a Pulitzer Prize for exposing the tragic breadth of the Catholic church’s cover-up of the city’s decades-long priest sex abuse scandal, the impeccable ensemble cast (especially Mark Ruffalo as the film’s ethical backbone) and the cumulative emotional impact work with devastating precision. What impresses me even more in retrospect is how carefully such explosive subject matter is handled in the film. Never once does the material tip in the direction of the sensational, rooting the movie in genuinely moral territory from start to finish.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0d0d0d;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sa80Fkaa9MA/VnY0V2zNuXI/AAAAAAAAAzU/0M8gbRzGUNM/s1600/InsideOut.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-sa80Fkaa9MA/VnY0V2zNuXI/AAAAAAAAAzU/0M8gbRzGUNM/s200/InsideOut.jpg" /></a></div>Disney/Pixar’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Inside Out</i>, directed by Pete Docter, is perhaps the only cartoon that will ever appear on a list of my favorite films. It’s often as profound in its ideas as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Spotlight</i>, and that’s really saying something. The movie takes place mostly inside the mind of an 11-year-old girl named Riley, who’s recently relocated with her parents from the midwest to San Francisco. As Riley starts to grow homesick, missing her former town and her friends there, the emotions in her head, voiced by an array of comedians and TV personalities, begin to wrestle it out with one another: Joy (Amy Poehler), Sadness (Phyllis Smith), Anger (Lewis Black), Disgust (Mindy Kaling), and Fear (Bill Hader).<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0d0d0d;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The inside of Riley’s mind, wide and sprawling as a world of its own, comes to life in a way that couldn’t be conveyed in any other medium. The film is mostly about memory, and the sorrow inherent in the notion that some of our memories, notably those from childhood, will simply be lost over time. In the film, memories are represented by colorful spheres; as Riley’s memories rack up, workers keep them safely shelved, plucking out the ones that have turned gray. The wasteland of forgotten memories where Joy finds herself later in the movie, an endless slope of darkened, discarded spheres, is an image that hasn’t left me since I saw the film several months ago. Neither has the movie’s central message: sometimes Sadness has to be allowed to take control.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0d0d0d;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-aqxUtsjJ_QM/VnY0bnBCDZI/AAAAAAAAAzc/vQ54zoBW9M8/s1600/TheMartian.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-aqxUtsjJ_QM/VnY0bnBCDZI/AAAAAAAAAzc/vQ54zoBW9M8/s200/TheMartian.jpg" /></a></div>Ridley Scott’s latest venture, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Martian</i>, I saw at a beautifully restored art deco theater in Brattleboro, Vermont. The packed Saturday night audience was easily the most subdued and well-behaved I’ve had the pleasure of viewing a movie with in years, reminding me of just how important that aspect of moviegoing can be, and how much it can affect our enjoyment of a film. The crowded house also provided a nice counterpoint to the on-screen desolation; an American astronaut, played with equal parts humor and gravitas by Matt Damon, gets stranded alone on Mars after a storm separates him from the rest of his mission crew. What follows is high and gripping entertainment, as Damon’s character engineers ways to grow food and survive on an inhospitable planet, while we await his rescue by the NASA folks down on Earth.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0d0d0d;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Of course, recent hits such as Alfonso Cuarón’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gravity</i> and Christopher Nolan’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Interstellar</i> could easily have made <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Martian</i> seem like a copycat film. And as much as I loved <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gravity</i>, I think there’s a bit more humanity in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Martian</i> overall. The science of Ridley Scott’s movie also feels more thought-out and authentic, perhaps because of its fictional source material, the eponymous 2011 novel by Andy Weir on which the film is based. It’s refreshing to see a scientific film that seems both accurate and respectful of its audience’s intelligence.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="tab-stops: .25in; text-align: justify;"><span style="color: #0d0d0d;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7mgfxDToLDE/VnY0gD1oMRI/AAAAAAAAAzk/J8suc5Fi8Ks/s1600/JamesWhite.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-7mgfxDToLDE/VnY0gD1oMRI/AAAAAAAAAzk/J8suc5Fi8Ks/s200/JamesWhite.jpg" /></a></div>Finally, another movie that I saw in New York over Thanksgiving, Josh Mond’s <i>James White</i>, is a little film that I’m very glad I had a chance to watch. A family drama set in Manhattan, just after the death of the protagonist’s somewhat absent father, it comes complete with a boost of adrenaline, thanks to the energetic performance of Christopher Abbott in the title role, an aspiring magazine writer who’s trying to find his path and seriously flailing. Cynthia Nixon’s fierce and soulful portrayal of his mother, a cancer patient nearing the end of her life, is award-worthy, masterfully evoking her character’s delicate strength. A heartbreaking dialogue between the two in their apartment’s bathroom contains the finest writing and delivery of any scene that I saw this year.</span></div>Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03004111643204359175noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5128479313373199891.post-3710321565768187442015-08-01T16:23:00.001-04:002017-01-28T17:49:12.700-05:00Brad Gooch, Smash Cut (HarperCollins, 2015)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Q5KCBIqgMkk/Vb0oQhFjPuI/AAAAAAAAAwQ/FRUoB3WCXbs/s1600/SmashCut.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Q5KCBIqgMkk/Vb0oQhFjPuI/AAAAAAAAAwQ/FRUoB3WCXbs/s200/SmashCut.jpg" /></a></div> <div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">I had to read Brad Gooch’s<i> Smash Cut: A Memoir of Howard &amp; Art &amp; the ’70s &amp; the ’80s </i>over a period of about two months in gradual increments, stopping and starting, to give myself time to process what I was feeling. As excited as I was throughout the book, I knew from the beginning how emotionally demanding it would be for me, a memoir about a talented artist and filmmaker, Howard Brookner, a handsome young gay man in New York City, who died of AIDS and was buried on his 35th birthday. I was right on the edge of tears in every paragraph of the prologue, so I allowed myself a couple of weeks after that to feel prepared enough to continue reading.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-PVj0ievEToc/Vb0okUJ-e-I/AAAAAAAAAwg/Q9kopwk0Fws/s1600/BradGooch.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-PVj0ievEToc/Vb0okUJ-e-I/AAAAAAAAAwg/Q9kopwk0Fws/s200/BradGooch.jpg" /></a></div>Brad Gooch, a biographer, novelist, and poet, was Howard Brookner’s boyfriend for a decade, from the time they met at a gay bar called the Ninth Circle in 1978 — as Howard gazed directly at Brad from a pastel haze of flashing jukebox lights — until Howard’s death in 1989. The Dantesque allusion of the bar’s name carries a sharp resonance from the outset. By its end the book documents a hellish descent into illness and loss, but only after ascending in its first half through an intimate, lovingly troubled relationship and into the initial levels of bohemian artistic ambition. “If I were forced to choose one trait that defined us, and our generation, and those times,” Gooch recalls, “I’d have to say that we were romantics. It was a romantic time.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Being a gay man myself and single at 41, I felt sure that the book’s romantic focus would present a steep but worthwhile challenge. Coincidentally, in the midst of my reading the book, the U.S. Supreme Court legalized same-sex marriage. When I first moved to Boston from Ohio in 1993, I thought for certain that by making such a move, I’d soon find a long-term boyfriend, someone not so different from the two young men depicted in this book. That’s not how things turned out for me. But something else the book makes clear is that even if two people find each other and commit themselves to staying together, the world may have very different plans.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2TBvN0feGqk/Vb2ozozuyVI/AAAAAAAAAw4/W_mpxENktog/s1600/HowardBrooknerFone.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2TBvN0feGqk/Vb2ozozuyVI/AAAAAAAAAw4/W_mpxENktog/s200/HowardBrooknerFone.jpg" /></a></div>Howard Brookner is about as likable a figure any memoirist (or reader) could hope for, and the author’s continued affection for him is apparent on every page. When the pair met in 1978, Howard was just starting work on a documentary about the Beat Generation fixture William Burroughs (the film was completed five years later in 1983), embedding himself in the downtown Manhattan art scene, along with his film school classmates like Jim Jarmusch. The middle son of a Jewish family from Long Island, Howard made an attractive fit for Brad, who had moved to New York from his WASPy roots in Pennsylvania. Remembering their first night spent together in Howard’s loft in the East Village, Brad describes “a sensation of being a mere composite of iron filings pulled in by the life-size magnet of Howard’s body.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Smash Cut</i> is equally a memoir of its era. As was standard for the age, casual sex and drug addictions underscore the surface action, tampering with the stability of our central couple. The segue from the days of glam rock into the harder edge of punk always lingers at the scene’s periphery, as does a figure like Andy Warhol, who appears in person halfway through the memoir, “with an intelligence that transcended gender and sexuality.” I worried that the pace might slow down when the author detours to Milan and Paris to try out a less than fulfilling stint in modeling, but Gooch’s storytelling and knack for detailing the characters he met in Europe keep the tempo of the book in line with the previous chapters in New York.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0DKTdCvuZPw/Vb0n7YaT-AI/AAAAAAAAAwI/TRMbbPzUmf8/s1600/BradGoochHowardBrookner.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-0DKTdCvuZPw/Vb0n7YaT-AI/AAAAAAAAAwI/TRMbbPzUmf8/s200/BradGoochHowardBrookner.jpg" /></a></div>Upon his return to Manhattan, Brad relocated with Howard to share an apartment on the fifth floor of the legendary Chelsea Hotel, a building the author mentions that he still passes every day in his current neighborhood, bringing on a cascade of memories, which was the real catalyst for writing this book. Within a few pages of their move to the Chelsea, in early July of 1981, Brad reads the now infamous article from the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">New York Times</i>, “Rare Cancer Seen in 41 Homosexuals,” the ominous beginning of what would later become the AIDS epidemic. “A chasm opened up in front of me,” the author writes.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Gooch’s description of the overarching feeling throughout the early years of the AIDS epidemic is among the most powerful I’ve encountered. The passage is prompted by a hard rain on the streets of New York and worth quoting here in its entirety: “It was a dark afternoon in the spring of 1987. So many memories of those last few years of the eighties are like that: rainy, bleak. It’s not possible that the weather was dismal for years on end, the same throughout all four seasons. But those years, taken together, were like one of those mornings when you wake up, the clouds are dense, the barometric pressure low, and no one calls. You feel as if your legs are a little heavy because the weather is creating a low-level system of depression throughout the city. That years-long day just went on and on and on.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KXgpb0US8FE/Vb0nvK2v36I/AAAAAAAAAwA/qCObaXMFN4s/s1600/HowardBrooknerFountain.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-KXgpb0US8FE/Vb0nvK2v36I/AAAAAAAAAwA/qCObaXMFN4s/s200/HowardBrooknerFountain.jpg" /></a></div>While he was finishing his work as director of the feature film <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Bloodhounds of Broadway</i>, a send-up of 1920s New York with a cast of Hollywood actors, including a young Madonna, Howard Brookner’s rapidly declining health landed him in St. Vincent’s hospital. During those years, even some medical professionals were still afraid to have physical contact with AIDS patients. Providing one reason why she’s historically been such an icon for the gay community, Madonna visits Howard at the hospital, climbs right onto the hospital bed with him, and kisses him on the lips. When Howard asks Brad why so many visitors are stopping by, Brad replies, “Because something about you makes people feel good when they come to see you ... because you give something to people.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:DocumentProperties> <o:Template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:Revision>0</o:Revision> <o:TotalTime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:Pages>1</o:Pages> <o:Words>888</o:Words> <o:Characters>5064</o:Characters> <o:Company>Emerson College</o:Company> <o:Lines>42</o:Lines> <o:Paragraphs>10</o:Paragraphs> <o:CharactersWithSpaces>6218</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:Version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:DontAutofitConstrainedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="276"> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <!--EndFragment--><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">On the day of his funeral, Howard Brookner departed from Brad Gooch’s life in the same way he first appeared, in a hazy halo of light, “a very strong bright light in an oval shape that was suspended high in the skeletal branches of a nearby tree.” <i>Smash Cut </i>is a beautiful, generous tribute to Howard’s life and memory, as well as a loving recollection of the time in which he lived.</span><span style="font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></div>Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03004111643204359175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5128479313373199891.post-87595868603360054562015-06-22T23:35:00.001-04:002015-06-23T10:25:54.146-04:0017th Annual Provincetown International Film Festival (June 17th - 21st, 2015)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-IOXQG6GRNEw/VYjTDYkHjBI/AAAAAAAAAu4/Hxd3nOUXLiE/s1600/PtownFilmFest2015.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-IOXQG6GRNEw/VYjTDYkHjBI/AAAAAAAAAu4/Hxd3nOUXLiE/s200/PtownFilmFest2015.jpg" /></a></div> <div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">If someone was new to our planet, the annual film festival in Provincetown would be an excellent introduction. Seeing nineteen movies over five days is kind of like a primer for life on earth. The diversity of subjects in the films that I watched spanned from a son visiting his elderly parents in the English countryside (Tom Browne’s contemplative <i>Radiator</i>) to documentaries about Marlon Brando, Tab Hunter, Peggy Guggenheim, and pioneering punk promoter Danny Fields, from playful criss-crossing of gender lines (François Ozon’s <i>The New Girlfriend</i>) to the somber tale of an ex-gay publisher turned pastor (Justin Kelly’s <i>I Am Michael</i>).<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-h1PBrf-NW54/VYjS_aGcd3I/AAAAAAAAAuw/MnW22hCLp5Y/s1600/EndOfTheTour.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-h1PBrf-NW54/VYjS_aGcd3I/AAAAAAAAAuw/MnW22hCLp5Y/s200/EndOfTheTour.jpg" /></a></div>Having known relatively little about the subject of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The End of the Tour</i>, the late novelist David Foster Wallace, I’m somewhat surprised that it turned out to be my favorite film in this year’s festival. Featuring a career-changing performance by comedic actor Jason Segel as Wallace, the film recounts the handful of days that David Lipsky (Jesse Eisenberg) spent staying and traveling on a promotional book tour with Wallace while interviewing him for a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rolling Stone</i> article. The visit later resulted in a memoir by Lipsky, which was the source material for the movie’s screenplay, adapted by playwright Donald Margulies. It makes sense, therefore, that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The End of the Tour</i> is<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>totally a writer’s movie, in the guise of a road movie with lots of intellectual sparring.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TJi7j6XvqAQ/VYjS6mKWgdI/AAAAAAAAAuo/dkGS7M5DpPA/s1600/LipskyWallace.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-TJi7j6XvqAQ/VYjS6mKWgdI/AAAAAAAAAuo/dkGS7M5DpPA/s200/LipskyWallace.jpg" /></a></div>In this case the sparring partners could not be more suitably matched. Segel captures Wallace’s brooding yet laidback nature in a way that seems genuine and likeable. Even Wallace’s diehard fans who are most protective of his legacy should be pleased by Segel’s tightrope walk of a portrayal, although it’s the kind of understated performance that deserves much more attention than it will probably receive. Eisenberg’s Lipsky is an ideal geeky foil to Wallace’s hulking nerdiness. The scenario of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rolling Stone</i> piece gave both men plenty to mistrust about each other, yet as the director James Ponsoldt worded it during the post-screening Q&amp;A, the film is “an unrequited Platonic love story.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Lipsky’s last-chance, whirlwind list of details as he describes the interior of Wallace’s rural Illinois home to his handheld tape recorder (with some expert help from Danny Elfman’s subtle electronic score) was the most moving moment from any film that I saw at the festival. And despite Wallace’s ongoing resistance to “selling out” to such a mainstream publication like <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Rolling Stone</i>, the Alanis Morissette poster on his living room wall — along with his boyish crush on her — is evidence that he didn’t have too much of an objection to becoming a sort of rock star himself. The film doesn’t dwell on Wallace’s suicide but instead lets the fact of it linger quietly in the framework of the movie, a decision that seems right to me.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HwWa8Jx2lHo/VYjS14RJx9I/AAAAAAAAAug/b89Gx4ePYyQ/s1600/GrandmaLilyTomlin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-HwWa8Jx2lHo/VYjS14RJx9I/AAAAAAAAAug/b89Gx4ePYyQ/s200/GrandmaLilyTomlin.jpg" /></a></div>The most outright entertaining film that I saw in the festival was Paul Weitz’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Grandma</i>, starring Lily Tomlin as a fabulously blunt lesbian poet, a character that’s slightly inspired by my writer friend Eileen Myles. Another road movie of a kind, though the trip doesn’t stray too far from the character’s California town during the course of a day, it’s the sort of crowd-pleasing film that filled every single seat in Town Hall, the festival’s largest venue. Tomlin plays Elle Reid, a former academic who’s gone broke just as she’s broken up with her much younger girlfriend, in the wake of Elle’s longtime partner Violet’s death from a costly cancer. Elle’s granddaughter, Sage, shows up right when Elle’s edge is sharpest, asking her grandma for money so that she can pay to have an abortion.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Mayhem and dark humor ensue, of course, as Elle and Sage go door-to-door in search of a handout. Along the way we meet tattoo artist Deathy (a wonderful Laverne Cox), café owner Carla (the late Elizabeth Peña in one of her final roles), Elle’s long-ago husband Karl (Sam Elliott, still sexy at seventy), and Marcia Gay Harden having a riotous time as Sage’s no-nonsense, business executive mother. Some might complain that the storyline feels a bit too thin, but the film is more focused on developing its characters than the action of the plot. Tomlin has waited forever to play a role like this, one that’s probably closest to who she is in everyday life.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UdKIGSrmQg8/VYjSwz4LE8I/AAAAAAAAAuY/1t_9Xin6G-U/s1600/TheWolfpack.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-UdKIGSrmQg8/VYjSwz4LE8I/AAAAAAAAAuY/1t_9Xin6G-U/s200/TheWolfpack.jpg" /></a></div>Among the documentaries that I saw, Crystal Moselle’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Wolfpack</i> was easily the most thought-provoking. In fact, I found it impossible to stop thinking about the film in the days following the screening, mainly because the story itself is so bizarre and the territory is so unfamiliar. The six teenage Angulo brothers were raised and home-schooled in their apartment at a public housing project on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Throughout their childhood, they almost never left the apartment. Their mother, who grew up on a farm in the Midwest, met their Peruvian father, a Hare Krishna, when she was hiking a trail to Machu Picchu on which he was a tour guide. Their goal for the Angulo tribe was ten children, far more than their apartment could accommodate, so they only made it to seven kids. The brothers’ younger sister is rarely seen on screen. Their father’s entrance is also intelligently delayed. As the story unfolds, we imagine him to be a frightening figure, and he’s definitely scary when he eventually surfaces, but he’s also quite cowardly in the way that he’s sequestered his children and his wife away from the world.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The reasons for trapping the family indoors are specious, a combination of quasi-religious and philosophical beliefs and a general fear of New York City and the dangers of American culture. What the boys lacked in social interaction, they made up for through watching movies. Their favorites are all manner of horror films and anything directed by Quentin Tarantino; they are, after all, a gang of teenage boys. Just watching the films repeatedly, however, was never enough. They re-enacted their favorite scenes on video camera for years, transcribing the scripts on a word processor, designing their own costumes, and hand-crafting weaponry with pieces of cardboard cut from empty cereal boxes and painted black. (An intricately assembled Batman suit is especially impressive and looks nearly authentic.)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">After one of their makeshift guns caught the eye of a neighbor in their building, an entire SWAT team busted through their door, handcuffing every member of the family and pinning them up against a wall. Finding nothing but toy guns in the apartment, the cops congratulated the boys on their craftsmanship and left them alone, until the oldest brother decided to venture outside wearing a homemade Michael Myers mask while their father was out buying groceries. That episode ended with an arrest and a stay in a mental institution, but the barrier between their claustrophobic apartment and the world outside had been breached at long last. Running up an avenue on their first day out of the apartment together, the Angulo brothers met the film’s director. She followed them with her camera from that point onward.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Their mother mentions being happy that now the boys can finally learn how movies “are both real and not real” in the context of the actual world, a phrase that could also describe the surreal qualities of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Wolfpack</i> itself. Although the almost identical members of the clan, after years of being kept indoors together, are bound to be visibly awkward on the subway and on an excursion to the beach at Coney Island, the film suggests that movies, at least when they’re the sole outlet for the intense imaginations of young male siblings, might provide just enough socialization to build a bridge to the culture-at-large.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8vTV1fDifNc/VYjSqr1I8AI/AAAAAAAAAuQ/LxdcN8T-iH8/s1600/LiveFromNewYork.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8vTV1fDifNc/VYjSqr1I8AI/AAAAAAAAAuQ/LxdcN8T-iH8/s200/LiveFromNewYork.jpg" /></a></div>Bao Nguyen’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Live From New York!</i> is about as different from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Wolfpack</i> as two documentaries can get, but I found this overview of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Saturday Night Live</i>’s forty-year history to be equally as interesting on other levels. While I’ve never been a massive fan of the show, I’ve followed it sporadically and sometimes more faithfully over time, depending on the individual cast and the quality of the writing team. To keep a weekly live show going for so long is a tremendous accomplishment in itself, and it’s one that deserves this type of closer examination.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The film’s overview is mostly chronological. Because there’s so much to cover, everyone who sees it will feel like something was left out. The cast members’ commentaries offer the most useful insights because they’re inside views from the people who actually made the show, or as Will Ferrell calls it, “a living, breathing time capsule.” Original cast member Laraine Newman mentions that what sets the show apart is that it’s a meritocracy: “If a sketch is good enough, then it runs.” More recent cast member Andy Samberg remarks that it’s the perfect show for the Internet generation because everything’s done in short clips. Head honcho Lorne Michaels draws on the controversial examples of Andrew Dice Clay, who was thought to be too crude to host the show, and Sinead O’Connor, who tore up a photo of the pope on the air, to explore the show’s tension between censorship and freedom of expression. Other examples highlight how issues of race and gender have proven to be challenging in the studio, just as they are in American society. The documentary’s director wisely chose to take a serious approach, one that investigates how <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Saturday Night Live</i> has both reflected and influenced the climate of our culture.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Speaking of culture, I want to close by considering a shift that I’ve noticed in many facets of American life lately. In the aftermath of the (so-called) Great Recession, there’s a desire to appease the masses that’s gradually seeping into all aspects of art and commerce. The anxieties are understandable as the global economy continues to get a foothold and gain traction. A certain sense of tameness and safety is widening its reach, nevertheless, affecting even my college teaching, a job that was once about challenging students to think but is now being forced into the mold of customer service representative.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:DocumentProperties> <o:Template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:Revision>0</o:Revision> <o:TotalTime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:Pages>1</o:Pages> <o:Words>1531</o:Words> <o:Characters>8728</o:Characters> <o:Company>Emerson College</o:Company> <o:Lines>72</o:Lines> <o:Paragraphs>17</o:Paragraphs> <o:CharactersWithSpaces>10718</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:Version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:DontAutofitConstrainedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="276"> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <!--EndFragment--><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">This shouldn’t be happening to art and film as well. Sure, it’s commercially important to have popular movies that are created for the mainstream. But it’s artistically important for films and other art forms to incite discomfort, bend the boundaries of genre, and propel their creators and their audiences toward the edge, both aesthetically and emotionally. The annual film festival in Provincetown showcases a variety of films each year that satisfy the need for edginess and experimentation, and I hope this trend continues in future years of the festival.</span><o:p></o:p></div>Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03004111643204359175noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5128479313373199891.post-41326963204992082662015-05-31T23:11:00.001-04:002015-06-01T01:10:46.487-04:00Austin Bunn, The Brink (Harper Perennial, 2015)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Fqt8u7joUfo/VWvLl4rAWhI/AAAAAAAAAtA/12iiQ4ln24c/s1600/AustinBunnTheBrink.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-Fqt8u7joUfo/VWvLl4rAWhI/AAAAAAAAAtA/12iiQ4ln24c/s200/AustinBunnTheBrink.jpg" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">The arrival of Austin Bunn’s debut book of short stories, <i>The Brink</i>, is certainly well-timed. We’re living in an era of history that feels like it’s always already post-apocalyptic, and that’s exactly what the tightly woven yet loosely worn ten stories in this ambitious and wide-ranging collection are all about. On the book’s opening page, we meet a precocious seventh-grader named Sam, for whom “nuclear holocaust is the only thing worth thinking about,” an obsession with extremity and obliteration that permeates Austin Bunn’s stories, without ever feeling inescapably dark or too heavy-handed. They’re doomsday tales for a generation that grew up training itself, after all, to view doomsday scenarios from a consciously ironic stance.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In addition to being a fiction writer, Bunn is a playwright and filmmaker who wrote the screenplay for 2013’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Kill Your Darlings</i>, starring Daniel Radcliffe as a young Allen Ginsberg. Each story in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Brink</i>has a cinematic sweep and depth; it’s clear that they were written with a filmmaker’s eye, and it’s easy to read them with a moviegoer’s imagination. Sometimes I was reminded of individual films. For instance, “The End of the Age Is Upon Us,” told from the perspective of a young man who’s involved in a cult, recalled the harrowing edginess of 2011’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Martha Marcy May Marlene</i>. Bunn’s approach to inhabiting his narrator’s sad and brainwashed vision of the world is fully believable and invested throughout.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">At times the momentum of the stories reminded me of Alice Munro, who in her best pieces leads her readers to the brink, dangles us over the edge, and then yanks us back up to safety, but never leaving us unchanged after a glimpse of the dangers below. It’s strange to think, therefore, that I also found Bunn’s storytelling style reminiscent of someone like the late John Hughes, whose brilliant and seemingly timeless mid-</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">’</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">80s teen romantic comedies always struck the right balance of drama and sentimentality. A number of these stories show a clear desire to be neatly resolved and self-contained, even in terms of structure, while others end openly or abruptly.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">A quality that feels new to fiction, at least for me, is the simulated alternative game-world called the Also in the story titled “Griefer.” The acceleration and velocity of language that Bunn taps into when the central character launches himself into the kinetic strata of the game — in stark contrast to his humdrum everyday life with his wife in their apartment — is similar to the Beat cadences of William Burroughs’ <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Naked Lunch</i>, a world drawn with words that zing and dance around on the page: “I zoomed to the edge of the gray-green butte. Below me, the city stretched out on five peninsulas into the ocean, a hand on a mirror. Hundreds of players hived at one of the city terminals. The Also’s composer, a nineteen-year-old kid who made the game sound like a nail salon, was having a live farewell jam. If I boosted my speakers, I could just perceive the twee.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-aXKAfSwVKS0/VWvLsgPvHlI/AAAAAAAAAtI/uArxI6_54dQ/s1600/AustinBunn.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-aXKAfSwVKS0/VWvLsgPvHlI/AAAAAAAAAtI/uArxI6_54dQ/s200/AustinBunn.jpg" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">My favorite story in the collection, and the one that seems most accomplished and realized, is “Ledge.” Set in the age of Christopher Columbus, it’s a seafaring tale about reaching the edge of the Flat Earth, and finding out what’s beyond the precipice. More than mere fantasy, the story is firmly rooted in the long-standing tradition of magical realism, and as such, its tone and dynamic are inherited most directly from Gabriel García Márquez. His own seafaring tales, like “The Handsomest Drowned Man in the World,” “The Last Voyage of the Ghost Ship,” and&nbsp;</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">“The Sea of Lost Time,”</span><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">&nbsp;bear an immediate relation to “Ledge,” and Bunn’s story aspires to be as genuinely good as those are.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">Narrated by a young man from Seville, who documents the sea journey in his ledger with a quill, it’s one of several stories in the collection (along with “Hazard 9” and “Curious Father”) that unassumingly threads in a gay storyline. In “Ledge” that subplot is even more seamless and unspoken, integrated into the story’s relationships, because anything more demonstrative than that would be anachronistic. The device is both successful and moving, as is the story’s main conceit, of an afterworld that lies beyond the ledge: “Death is the tyranny. To conquer the ledge was a conquest over this. The greed of time.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Brink</i>’s virtuosic, trademark aura is situated between the cyberpunk avatars of “Griefer” and the exploration-era atmospherics of “Ledge.” I’d call it Steampunk Lite, and I don’t mean Lite in the sense of hollow imitation. I mean it in the sense that these stories, though obviously influenced by the genre of science fiction, don’t stop there. They’re always totally literary in concept, execution, and scope, which is also what makes them authentic. Their language engages and never shies away from the playful complexity of metaphor. A group of nerdy school kids running in a game rushes around in “a vortex of spaz.” The summit of a mountain looks like “a kneecap rising out of a bath,” and a helicopter landing on bare ground “felt like a pit stop on a hot plate.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:DocumentProperties> <o:Template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:Revision>0</o:Revision> <o:TotalTime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:Pages>1</o:Pages> <o:Words>789</o:Words> <o:Characters>4498</o:Characters> <o:Company>Emerson College</o:Company> <o:Lines>37</o:Lines> <o:Paragraphs>8</o:Paragraphs> <o:CharactersWithSpaces>5523</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:Version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:DontAutofitConstrainedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="276"> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <!--EndFragment--><br /><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: Trebuchet MS, sans-serif;">In terms of characters, what all of these stories share is their focus on outsiders. The catalysts for outsiderdom throughout the book are various and diverse: unhappy marriages, infidelity, sheer geekiness, teenage pregnancy and abortion, sexual difference, facial disfigurement following a car crash, assembling an entire battalion of misfits. These are stories about loneliness that have the power to make their readers less lonely.</span><o:p></o:p></div>Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03004111643204359175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5128479313373199891.post-19489251168694556642015-02-22T03:45:00.004-05:002016-03-12T20:36:35.822-05:00Fifty Favorite Songs<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cydhRX7zF7E/VOmWUjH8U9I/AAAAAAAAAqI/rLPOl70hkG0/s1600/AlphavilleForeverYoung.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-cydhRX7zF7E/VOmWUjH8U9I/AAAAAAAAAqI/rLPOl70hkG0/s200/AlphavilleForeverYoung.jpg" /></a></div><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:DocumentProperties> <o:Template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:Revision>0</o:Revision> <o:TotalTime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:Pages>1</o:Pages> <o:Words>276</o:Words> <o:Characters>1575</o:Characters> <o:Company>Emerson College</o:Company> <o:Lines>13</o:Lines> <o:Paragraphs>3</o:Paragraphs> <o:CharactersWithSpaces>1934</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:Version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:DontAutofitConstrainedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="276"> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <div class="MsoNormal"><div style="text-align: justify;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Lately, I’ve been reorganizing my CD collection, which has given me a perfect opportunity to compile a list of my fifty favorite songs. My only rule has been to include no more than one song by any given artist. Also, I came of age in the 1980s, so forgive my obvious affection for all of the awesome music from that particular decade. Or don’t.</span></div></div><div class="MsoNormal"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Alphaville, “Forever Young”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Tori Amos, “Winter”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Aztec Camera, “Valium Summer”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The Beloved, “You’ve Got Me Thinking”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The Blue Nile, “The Downtown Lights”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Kate Bush, “Running Up That Hill”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Mary Chapin Carpenter, “John Doe No. 24”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Tracy Chapman, “Fast Car”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Cocteau Twins, “Heaven or Las Vegas”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Crowded House, “Don’t Dream It’s Over”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Etienne Daho, “Weekend à Rome”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Ani DiFranco, “Grey”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Nick Drake, “Northern Sky”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Everything but the Girl, “Talk to Me Like the Sea”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Frazier Chorus, “Dream Kitchen”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Peter Gabriel, “Mercy Street”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Patty Griffin, “Rain”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Hem, “Sailor”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Sara Hickman, “Sister and Sam”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The Human League, “Human”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The Innocence Mission, “Black Sheep Wall”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Michael Jackson, “Human Nature”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Rickie Lee Jones, “We Belong Together”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Joy Division, “Love Will Tear Us Apart”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Nik Kershaw, “Radio Musicola”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Lamb, “Gabriel”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Cyndi Lauper, “Time After Time”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The Lover Speaks, “No More ‘I Love You’s”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Madonna, “Open Your Heart”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The Magnetic Fields, “Papa Was a Rodeo”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Joni Mitchell, “A Case of You”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Momus, “The Sadness of Things”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Bill Nelson, “Dream Ships Set Sail”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark, “Souvenir”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Pet Shop Boys, “Being Boring”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Prefab Sprout, “Goodbye Lucille #1”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Prince, “Little Red Corvette”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Radiohead, “Fake Plastic Trees”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Roxy Music, “More Than This”<o:p></o:p></span></div> <div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Scritti Politti, “Overnite”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Duncan Sheik, “That Says It All”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Bruce Springsteen, “Tunnel of Love”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Talking Heads, “This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">10,000 Maniacs, “What’s the Matter Here?”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Thompson Twins, “Hold Me Now”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Times Two, “Raining All Over the World”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Suzanne Vega, “Luka”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The Waterboys, “The Whole of the Moon”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Dar Williams, “When I Was a Boy”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Neil Young, “Birds”</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: medium;"><o:p></o:p></span></div><!--EndFragment-->Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03004111643204359175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5128479313373199891.post-81803969729195679082014-12-25T01:25:00.000-05:002015-01-17T02:47:23.132-05:00Five Favorite Films of 2014 <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:DocumentProperties> <o:Template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:Revision>0</o:Revision> <o:TotalTime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:Pages>1</o:Pages> <o:Words>837</o:Words> <o:Characters>4773</o:Characters> <o:Company>Emerson College</o:Company> <o:Lines>39</o:Lines> <o:Paragraphs>9</o:Paragraphs> <o:CharactersWithSpaces>5861</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:Version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:DontAutofitConstrainedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="276"> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I haven’t previously posted any year-end lists here on my blog. Back in my younger days, I used to compile them annually, and I took the whole process quite seriously. I’m not sure exactly why that ritual became less important to me as time went on. I think it was partly because as I grew a bit older, I started to realize how much the entire culture is based on the idea of selling things, and year-end lists are just another aspect of that consumer mentality. Yet a handful of movies that I saw this year resonated deeply enough that writing something about them in retrospective summary seemed like a worthwhile task once again.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-IIlWABLuc6w/VJurV682HyI/AAAAAAAAApg/SbeLQujZyLE/s1600/UnderTheSkin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-IIlWABLuc6w/VJurV682HyI/AAAAAAAAApg/SbeLQujZyLE/s200/UnderTheSkin.jpg" /></a></div>My favorite film of the year was Jonathan Glazer’s distinctive abstraction <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Under the Skin</i>, one of Scarlett Johansson’s arthouse projects. It’s not a movie that I initially thought I’d like, nor even one that I’d been planning to see, but after some trustworthy recommendations, I was excited to check it out. Its style, themes, and mood reminded me of Stanley Kubrick, and I think the film is actually as good as Kubrick, too. The more mysterious elements — who (or what) Johansson’s character is, where in the cosmos she comes from, where the random men she picks up in a van disappear to, what her unexplained sidekick on the motorcycle has to do with it — are the main reasons why the movie has lingered in my mind many months after watching it. The mysteriousness could be because I’m unfamiliar with the book on which the film is based, though I’ve read that the book and film are quite different. I was also staggered by the movie’s daring visual effects, which left me wondering how they were accomplished.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2NXP4JWaJTI/VJurR6NmogI/AAAAAAAAApY/r1f9xrZPGdk/s1600/StrangerByTheLake.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-2NXP4JWaJTI/VJurR6NmogI/AAAAAAAAApY/r1f9xrZPGdk/s200/StrangerByTheLake.jpg" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Under the Skin</i>would fit perfectly as a double-feature with my second favorite movie of the year, Alain Guiraudie’s pensive gay French noir thriller <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Stranger by the Lake</i>. Set entirely at an idyllic lakeside cruising area for men, with a cast comprised exclusively of men, it’s an explicit (and at times unabashedly sexual) version of what <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Under the Skin</i> presents only allegorically. No film I’ve seen captures the rhythms and rules of a gay cruising area more realistically, immersing its audience in those codes and expectations. We begin to know who the characters are by which cars are parked in the lakeside lot, as we observe the daily ebb and flow of the traffic. It’s not a movie about community, and it’s also not really about individuals. Relationships, I guess, but a very particular kind. The film’s been likened to Hitchcock often, and the comparison is apt. Typical plot points like murder and sex serve as entryways for an exploration of the darker, or at least less often acknowledged, aspects of desire, loneliness, and human psychology.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-V6lqftL45UI/VJurOL0kGZI/AAAAAAAAApQ/WP3Ui9k2p3Y/s1600/FindingVivianMaier.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-V6lqftL45UI/VJurOL0kGZI/AAAAAAAAApQ/WP3Ui9k2p3Y/s200/FindingVivianMaier.jpg" /></a></div>My favorite documentary of 2014 was <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Finding Vivian Maier</i>, an astounding portrait of an eccentric amateur street photographer whose work was discovered after her death, when a young man named John Maloof (who also co-directed the film) purchased boxes of her negatives inexpensively at auction. Little did he know what he’d unearthed. Maier’s voluminous images are often indelible and stunning, and I was perplexed that some critics and museums have refused to recognize her artistry. Her choice to work as a live-in nanny, meaning she didn’t have to pay rent, gave her time to wander around Chicago and other cities to spontaneously find her candid photographic subjects. The lesson is one of looking: pay close attention and you will find magic. Maier’s biography, on the other hand, proves to be enigmatic and sometimes harrowing. She died in 2009, completely destitute and homeless. While true artists often fly under the radar, the fact that her art remained unseen in her lifetime is wrong. Maloof's and Charlie Siskel’s well-crafted documentary humanely corrects that wrong.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MUNRcTw4mAo/VJurKR_jR3I/AAAAAAAAApI/gZLSP0se0x4/s1600/Locke.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-MUNRcTw4mAo/VJurKR_jR3I/AAAAAAAAApI/gZLSP0se0x4/s200/Locke.jpg" /></a></div>The last two films that I enjoyed most this year, Steven Knight’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Locke</i> and Richard Linklater’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Boyhood</i>, are two very different kinds of cinematic experiments. <i>Locke</i> is an experiment of scope within extremely close quarters; the entire film takes place in real time inside the car of the title character, unforgettably portrayed by Tom Hardy, as he drives to London overnight, talking to various people on his phone for the duration of the trip. Although it sounds like a bland exercise, the effect is totally riveting throughout. My attention never went slack because the movie itself never did either, gradually escalating the tension from phone call to phone call. Hardy’s performance is nothing short of miraculous, mostly because everything is focused non-stop on his facial expressions and his reactions to the voices on the other end of the line. I’ll keep the details of the storyline a secret here so that viewers can experience those for themselves. Suffice it to say that <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Locke</i> is a ride that’s unlike any other the cinema has offered until now.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Ii7Zvp8zmo0/VJurFyuo45I/AAAAAAAAApA/kFE9FlnKQWc/s1600/Boyhood.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Ii7Zvp8zmo0/VJurFyuo45I/AAAAAAAAApA/kFE9FlnKQWc/s200/Boyhood.jpg" /></a></div>The same could be said of <i>Boyhood</i>. It’s also an experiment in scope, but one that’s the opposite of <i>Locke</i> since Linklater’s innovative movie unfolds over twelve full years of its characters’ lives, as well as the actors’ lives, filmed for a few days at a time during each year of that timeframe. We watch the central character grow up and mature, from age 6 to 18, right before our eyes. Luckily, Ellar Coltrane has the kind of laidback manner that’s easy to grow up with. Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette, playing his divorced parents, also age gracefully despite their individual characters’ various trials and tribulations over time. Arquette’s portrayal is her very best work; the scenes of domestic violence from her character’s second marriage felt frighteningly familiar to me, as stark and powerful as the ones that I recall from my own childhood home. Linklater should win this year’s Oscar for directing. <i>Boyhood</i> is unprecedented in cinematic history.</span><o:p></o:p></div><!--EndFragment-->Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03004111643204359175noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5128479313373199891.post-72247426674874379542014-10-05T02:22:00.000-04:002014-10-06T01:04:56.882-04:00Days of Heaven (dir. Terrence Malick, 1978)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-i4HtZM2Tc8s/VDDgcPuPHKI/AAAAAAAAAns/GF6M_Bi09ck/s1600/DaysOfHeaven.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-i4HtZM2Tc8s/VDDgcPuPHKI/AAAAAAAAAns/GF6M_Bi09ck/s200/DaysOfHeaven.jpg" /></a></div> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:DocumentProperties> <o:Template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:Revision>0</o:Revision> <o:TotalTime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:Pages>1</o:Pages> <o:Words>860</o:Words> <o:Characters>4902</o:Characters> <o:Company>Emerson College</o:Company> <o:Lines>40</o:Lines> <o:Paragraphs>9</o:Paragraphs> <o:CharactersWithSpaces>6020</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:Version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:DontAutofitConstrainedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="276"> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">It’s far past time that I write something about what I’ve long considered to be the most beautifully photographed movie ever, Terrence Malick’s <i>Days of Heaven</i>.&nbsp; Thousands of other people, of course, have already made this assessment.&nbsp; But when a film is so filled with rhapsodic images, that’s how individuals respond; they rhapsodize, and they do so because the astonishing principal cinematography by the late Néstor Almendros guarantees such a response.&nbsp; When an audience is quietly presented with one rapturous image after another, the viewer’s perceptions are elevated (or sublimated) to a higher level, at which expressing in words one’s appreciation for a newfound understanding of beauty becomes almost too daunting a task.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kaIUKTWhfaM/VDDgkwjVYEI/AAAAAAAAAn0/zPfPgTBFPPY/s1600/DaysHeavenGate.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-kaIUKTWhfaM/VDDgkwjVYEI/AAAAAAAAAn0/zPfPgTBFPPY/s200/DaysHeavenGate.jpg" /></a></div>There’s a narrative here that I’ll go into later, though it’s best to start with the importance of the images themselves.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Rarely does a director of Hollywood movies choose to let the images do the vast majority of the work.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Silence is expensive unless it’s written into the film itself, as Malick’s sparse screenplay exemplifies.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The long stretches of silent contemplation soothe as much as they unsettle, in order to convey fully the feeling of being alone in the world.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The film follows a group of nomadic migrant workers, whose solitude is palpable even when they’re together, forming a kind of desperate, haphazard community.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LU-4kKPvJ4o/VDDgtL3L07I/AAAAAAAAAn8/CFpgIMZX5lo/s1600/DaysHeavenScarecrow.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-LU-4kKPvJ4o/VDDgtL3L07I/AAAAAAAAAn8/CFpgIMZX5lo/s200/DaysHeavenScarecrow.jpg" /></a></div>The film's cinematographer, Néstor Almendros, died of AIDS-related lymphoma in 1992.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>His eyesight was already beginning to fail when <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Days of Heaven</i> was being filmed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>He worked carefully and improvisationally, insisting that the movie incorporate as much natural light as possible.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>(Apparently, some of the lighting crew quit the film in frustration because he didn’t give them enough work.)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>This technique was inspired by early motion pictures from the silent film era.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Rightly, Almendros won the Oscar for Best Cinematography for his work on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Days of Heaven</i>, his first Hollywood feature.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lOPjCo0FJEc/VDDgxnFmF4I/AAAAAAAAAoE/p9V27TjIlCE/s1600/DaysHeavenTrain.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-lOPjCo0FJEc/VDDgxnFmF4I/AAAAAAAAAoE/p9V27TjIlCE/s200/DaysHeavenTrain.jpg" /></a></div>I remember the first time I saw <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Days of Heaven</i>, on the big screen at the Harvard Film Archive about twenty years ago, which was a mesmerizing and unforgettable experience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I also recall that I was alone in the back of the theater, with only a group of several film students who were sitting together in the middle row of the auditorium.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>They applauded when Néstor Almendros’ name appeared on screen during the opening credits.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I took note of that then, and soon after, I understood why.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Days of Heaven</i> is often referred to as a poetic film, and it’s because poetry relies equally on the beauty and strangeness of its imagery to convey its implicit messages.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-r0V0UQ5qSYU/VDDg4vvctwI/AAAAAAAAAoM/t6mp6pJiwWA/s1600/DaysHeavenFlags.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-r0V0UQ5qSYU/VDDg4vvctwI/AAAAAAAAAoM/t6mp6pJiwWA/s200/DaysHeavenFlags.jpg" /></a></div>The movie was filmed on the wide plains of Alberta, Canada, but the landscape is a stand-in for the open wilds of the American midwest just across the border.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>No film better captures that landscape and its euphoric aura of boundless autumnal light at harvest time.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Many of the scenes were filmed during “magic hour,” although as Almendros made clear in retrospective interviews, it was never an entire hour.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Most scenes at that time of day, after the sunset and before nightfall, were filmed in about twenty minutes.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jZ9FBO6x8I8/VDDhAR493CI/AAAAAAAAAoU/gMa1dji3P24/s1600/DaysHeavenGirl.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-jZ9FBO6x8I8/VDDhAR493CI/AAAAAAAAAoU/gMa1dji3P24/s200/DaysHeavenGirl.jpg" /></a></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Days of Heaven</i>is endearingly narrated by a feisty young girl, Linda (Linda Manz), who’s traveling west by train from Chicago with her older brother and guardian, Bill (Richard Gere), and Bill’s girlfriend, Abby (Brooke Adams).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Bill got into a fateful skirmish with a foreman at his factory job and had to skip town fast.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>To avoid problems on the roads and rails as they seek migrant farm work for a few dollars at a time, Bill and Abby masquerade as brother and sister, too, which ends up causing them trouble with suspicious strangers on more than one occasion.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-521_l5_H_A0/VDDhFulV07I/AAAAAAAAAoc/4vmMjUp9WAY/s1600/DaysHeavenShepardGere.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-521_l5_H_A0/VDDhFulV07I/AAAAAAAAAoc/4vmMjUp9WAY/s200/DaysHeavenShepardGere.jpg" /></a></div>Deep in the American heartland, they find work as sackers on a sprawling, idyllic wheat farm owned by a handsome young overseer who’s billed only as The Farmer (Sam Shepard).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Eavesdropping on a house doctor’s visit, Bill learns that the farmer is slowly dying from a terminal illness and may be dead within a year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>He convinces Abby, somewhat against her will, to pursue a relationship with the farmer, hoping that within a couple of years, they’ll inherit the farm, house, and a sizable amount of money.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The ruse works, and Abby becomes the farmer’s wife, while Bill and Linda stay to live on the farm as members of Abby’s family, or so the farmer initially thinks.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Before very long, his suspicions grow and turn into anger at the perceived deception and his failing health.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ceE7gIiUm_U/VDDhLjE2lEI/AAAAAAAAAok/-ZtqM8iachk/s1600/DaysHeavenShepardAdams.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-ceE7gIiUm_U/VDDhLjE2lEI/AAAAAAAAAok/-ZtqM8iachk/s200/DaysHeavenShepardAdams.jpg" /></a></div>Clearly, Malick’s quietly intelligent screenplay is built on an archetypal story, a love triangle with a revenge subplot.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>As often as Malick relies on seemingly formulaic narrative components, each of these instances is handled so distinctively that they belong entirely to this film.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Romantic scenes of the happily married couple riding a sleigh through the snow in winter on the abandoned farm are so precisely picturesque that they become Malick’s own, as do the frantic scenes of a plague of insects that invades the wheat crop and destroys the land when the vengeful farmer sets the fields ablaze.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8CfgWf-mkLE/VDDhQhOxQOI/AAAAAAAAAos/OFEC2l9jImY/s1600/DaysOfHeavenFire.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8CfgWf-mkLE/VDDhQhOxQOI/AAAAAAAAAos/OFEC2l9jImY/s200/DaysOfHeavenFire.jpg" /></a></div>All of this is handled with a fluidity, grace, and immediacy to which most other filmmakers can only aspire.&nbsp; This sort of classic tale requires classic storytelling, yet what gives Malick’s film its lasting power is how thoroughly it creates its own impressionistic rules.&nbsp; As audience members we know where all of this is going, but scene after scene still takes us by surprise in some unexpected way.&nbsp; The emotion intensifies as the pace slackens; then the emotion will suddenly relax as the pace speeds up again.&nbsp; After the film’s main trio must flee the burnt-out farm and make their way to a boat to escape, the whole tone shifts in a way that’s perfectly sensible and also feels like we’re suddenly in another movie, when in fact we’re just in the final act of this majestically tragic adventure that’s both too beautiful for reality and totally true to life.</span><o:p></o:p></div><!--EndFragment-->Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03004111643204359175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5128479313373199891.post-13621048452796700182014-09-06T20:53:00.001-04:002014-09-07T02:18:21.098-04:00Alfred Corn, Unions (Barrow Street Press, 2014)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4g-WvlWC-40/VAurzzx6C7I/AAAAAAAAAnQ/QIPas6NnPgU/s1600/AlfredCornUnions.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-4g-WvlWC-40/VAurzzx6C7I/AAAAAAAAAnQ/QIPas6NnPgU/s200/AlfredCornUnions.jpg" /></a></div><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:DocumentProperties> <o:Template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:Revision>0</o:Revision> <o:TotalTime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:Pages>1</o:Pages> <o:Words>905</o:Words> <o:Characters>5160</o:Characters> <o:Company>Emerson College</o:Company> <o:Lines>43</o:Lines> <o:Paragraphs>10</o:Paragraphs> <o:CharactersWithSpaces>6336</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:Version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:DontAutofitConstrainedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="276"> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">Unions</span></i><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">, Alfred Corn’s eleventh book of poetry, is his most accessible collection.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The poems are still diverse and demanding in their references and allusions, as well as in their variety of forms, but those aspects don’t call attention to themselves, instead taking a relaxed approach and inviting the reader to follow suit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>It might also be because I’m currently twice the age I was when I first read Corn’s poetry as an undergraduate twenty years ago that the density of references ceases to distract me; now, I recognize and understand the majority of them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I can better appreciate, too, Corn’s deft sleights of hand in slipping them discreetly into his poems.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">This is an elegantly structured and sequenced volume, and its title motif is intentionally woven through the book.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Among the collection’s myriad kinds of unions are transatlantic journeys to places that figure into roughly a fourth of the poems.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The epic “Eleven Londons” recalls in close detail a series of extended stays in the city over a period of four decades, carefully documenting the sociocultural changes that took place in the author’s life, from the days of Jimi Hendrix and Jim Morrison to debates over same-sex marriage and post-9/11 wariness.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">“A city is a person,” writes Corn midway through the poem, and its segments, constructed like free-flowing journal entries, are built around that notion; the city changes as much as the poem’s author and the culture that surrounds them both, just as his perspective on all of it changes simultaneously.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>A steady, informal rhythmic underpinning that’s reminiscent of Derek Walcott’s lines keeps the sum of the parts intact.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Having visited London annually each spring myself for the past two decades, I matched much of my own catalog of memories with Corn’s:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Charing Cross, the National Portrait Gallery, Camden Lock, Regent’s Park, Little Venice, Covent Garden, the bounty of West End theatrical productions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>We’ve even seen some of the same shows.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">Among the book’s other United Kingdom-based poems, I particularly like “Bloody,” an incisive etymology of that curious English adverb and its lack of (polite) American counterparts.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>In a jaunt across the Irish Sea, “Dublin Night” is also indelibly memorable and haunting, with its lone shadow of a figure drifting through the bustling center of the town in darkness, wondering if it might be best to disappear into the black water running under a bridge.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">Despite such solitary glimpses, there are also, certainly, interpersonal unions represented at points throughout the volume — friendships (“Bob”), rivalries (“Doppelgänger”), romances (“In Half-Light”), sexual relationships (“Möbius Strip”).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But among the interpersonal poems, the most impressive and intriguing one for me is “Common Dwelling,” a poem about near-strangers, one’s neighbors residing in the hive of a communal building.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>We live in a world in which fewer and fewer people can afford to purchase a house, so it’s a scenario that almost all of us can relate to:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>“the enviable neighbor couple / who shift and stir less than an arm’s length / behind the headboard, their murmurs / sifting into consciousness / as though no sheetrock intervened.” No other poem that I know of conveys that uneasy form of sonic intimacy so effectively.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Or this:<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">“Heavy boots not muted by rugs clunk<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">about on the floor above.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Months<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">of obstinate slogging guarantee<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">their pace would instantly anywhere<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">be recognized, if not the pacer.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">Odd moments in the day he launches<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">his campaign with a ruckus that feels<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">coercive, sure, but on behalf of what?”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Hd-0cVXwLAo/VAur6xq2TaI/AAAAAAAAAnY/bRZYNa-EWa0/s1600/AlfredCorn2013.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-Hd-0cVXwLAo/VAur6xq2TaI/AAAAAAAAAnY/bRZYNa-EWa0/s200/AlfredCorn2013.jpg" /></a></span></div><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">Formally, Corn turns in many different directions in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Unions</i>with skillful subtlety.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>In addition to plenty of free verse, there are several poems in rhymed couplets and quatrains, a few semi-sonnets, a trenchant villanelle about growing older, a poem written in Sapphic syllabic stanzas, even a sort of vertical palindrome.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Another kind of form arises from thematically strategic pairings of poems that make the pieces resonate more deeply in sequence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>For instance, a contemplation of the great pessimists from history and literature is followed by an existential meditation on the cast-off, broken wreckage out behind a pottery kiln, a scene of scattered fragmentation that nevertheless maintains its own sense of beauty.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">The same image could be applied to the American and global political landscapes as Corn aptly describes them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>From allegorically political poems like “The Wall” to more direct and pointed indictments like “Cascade of Faces,” Corn navigates back and forth between a citizen’s commentary and active resistance.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Yet he always seems to emphasize human beings’ ongoing responsibility to each other, ultimately, even if our contemporary cybernetic world makes those connections ironically more difficult to forge.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Today, our potential unions often throw our loneliness and solitude into stark relief within “the musicosmic comedy of time.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;">That solitude takes center stage in “Hunting Season,” probably my favorite poem from the collection.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Several alternating strands of imagery — an approaching thunderstorm, a man out walking his dog, another listening to a classical composition on the radio while watching from a window — escalate to a powerful crescendo that suggests imagination, even imagination into some distant residual memory of a past life in ancient times, may be the only real remedy and redemption.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Just like in the rest of Corn’s work itself, music is the vehicle, of course, that gets this poem’s speaker there:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>“Sing, goddess. / Lightheaded, I’m ready to be torn apart.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><br /></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-size: 13.0pt;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The poem also suggests that our increasingly technological existence will only ever carry us back to nature, which is where the book begins, with a gorgeous ode to the wind titled “All It Is.”&nbsp; “Any terrain you find arises from all / that came before,” Corn surmises, after tracing a breeze that makes its way through treetops and over wetlands.&nbsp; The same could be said of how this book itself came to be, arising from all of Corn’s books, poems, and experiences that came before.&nbsp; One more union, then, or rather, many unions across the vast divisions of time and space.&nbsp; As Corn closes one poem early in the collection, “Since what divides things joins them, too, united.”</span><o:p></o:p></span></div><!--EndFragment-->Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03004111643204359175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5128479313373199891.post-52039477986292896672014-08-16T05:45:00.000-04:002014-08-21T05:29:46.001-04:00Tori Amos at Boston Opera House (August 15th, 2014)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-eOZ3s0iwC0I/U-8nH9gE_CI/AAAAAAAAAms/Cr7R-rj4vmE/s1600/ToriAmosBoston.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-eOZ3s0iwC0I/U-8nH9gE_CI/AAAAAAAAAms/Cr7R-rj4vmE/s200/ToriAmosBoston.jpg" /></a></div><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:DocumentProperties> <o:Template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:Revision>0</o:Revision> <o:TotalTime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:Pages>1</o:Pages> <o:Words>741</o:Words> <o:Characters>4224</o:Characters> <o:Company>Emerson College</o:Company> <o:Lines>35</o:Lines> <o:Paragraphs>8</o:Paragraphs> <o:CharactersWithSpaces>5187</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:Version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:DontAutofitConstrainedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="276"> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I’ve recently come back around to being a Tori Amos fan again, in part because she’s never left the game.&nbsp; Despite weathering a series of upheavals in an industry that’s less than friendly to women over thirty, much less fifty, her artistic output continues at a prolific pace.&nbsp; Tori’s first three albums have always been special to me, especially her 1992 debut <i>Little Earthquakes</i>, which I’ll forever associate with my sophomore year of college; that album was released right around the time when my whole life changed and I decided to move to Boston.&nbsp; Though her music remains ever interesting, <i>Boys for Pele</i> (1996) was the last Tori Amos album that I really loved in its entirety, and <i>Scarlet’s Walk</i> (2002) was her last album from which I enjoyed the majority of the songs.&nbsp; On each of Tori’s seven studio albums released since then, only a handful of tracks have usually stood out to me, even if I greatly admire her body of music as a whole.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Tori’s solo show last night at Boston Opera House was the third time I’ve seen her in concert, and the first time I’ve heard her perform without a band.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>There’s no doubt that she commanded the space, both vocally and via the magnetism of her persona.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>In a tight 90-minute set (two songs were cut from the encore due to the theater’s curfew…or because Tori took too long to get onstage), the setlist spanned her entire solo career, though it was a heavily early-era selection.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>That</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">’s</span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">&nbsp;totally fine with me since I adore her early albums, but I’m sure most Toriphiles would be surprised that out of the twenty songs she performed, eight of them came from the first five years of Tori’s output:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>a volcanic rendition of the title number from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Little Earthquakes</i>, three <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Under the Pink</i>-era songs, and four tracks from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Boys for Pele</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Tori knows her audience, and because Boston’s a college town, she also knows that the folks in the audience who loved those early albums during their college years are the ones who jumpstarted her career back then.</span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">After the standard opener “Parasol,” Tori’s launch into “Caught a Lite Sneeze” set a thrilling tempo for the crowd.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>(To the woman sitting in front of me who blew her nose throughout the entire song:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>very literal timing!)<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>“Secret Spell,” a song from 2007’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">American Doll Posse</i> that I’d never taken much notice of before, sounded gorgeous in a live setting and took on an enchanting layer of allure.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I’m still a bit shocked that my favorite number of the night was “Baker Baker.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>While I’ve always found this little breakup song to be innocuously moving, it acquired mournful new depth for me, even minus John Philip Shenale’s lush strings arrangement from the album version, when Tori sang it alone at her piano out on the stage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>“Time / thought I’d made friends with time” among the song’s closing lines felt like stopping time itself as Tori delivered them.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yJlYTIwI4Fo/U-8nDU6uJWI/AAAAAAAAAmk/S99eIaQ7svQ/s1600/ToriAmosBostonOperaHouseSetList.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yJlYTIwI4Fo/U-8nDU6uJWI/AAAAAAAAAmk/S99eIaQ7svQ/s200/ToriAmosBostonOperaHouseSetList.jpg" /></a></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Although Tori didn’t play my request (Corey Hart’s 1985 synthpop epic “Never Surrender”) during the Lizard Lounge segment of the show, the other requests that she chose to perform certainly did not disappoint.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Dave Loggins’ “Please Come to Boston,” with a surprise denouement from Boston’s “More Than a Feeling,” was a poignant location-specific choice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>However, I’ve lived in the city for over two decades now, so I’m not exactly desperate to hear any more songs about Boston.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>But Tori’s dark and inspired electronic mash-up of Prince’s “When Doves Cry” and the “white-winged dove” refrain from Stevie Nicks’ “Edge of Seventeen” absolutely slaughtered the audience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Altogether, it was probably one of the best Lizard Lounge pairings of the tour thus far, and it was also cute to hear Tori introduce the covers by saying she couldn’t remember if she’d ever performed them live before since “we menopausal women can’t always remember things.”<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">All those crying white doves offered Tori an elegant poetic segue into “Black-Dove (January),” from 1998’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">from the choirgirl hotel</i>, as well as “Black Swan,” a rare 1994 B-side from the single for “Pretty Good Year.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Unfortunately, I must concur with some past concertgoers about the pre-recorded backing tracks that Tori used for both “Cornflake Girl” and “Wedding Day.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>They simply didn’t fit the vibe of this intimate solo show, and they also drowned out Tori’s vocals to some extent.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I think the point of picking up the pace with backing tracks was to invite the kids to rush down the aisles to the stage of the opera house; Tori actually waved for everybody to crowd the stage at the thumping start of “Cornflake Girl,” much to the dismay of the venue’s frenzied house managers, who kept trying, unsuccessfully, to clear the aisles until the end of the evening.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>“Hey Jupiter” made for a lovely, contemplative closer.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"></span><br /><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bzCmtqMHVa0/U-8m9ieYRoI/AAAAAAAAAmc/tQrpWFPuzlU/s1600/ToriAmosUnrepentantGeraldines.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-bzCmtqMHVa0/U-8m9ieYRoI/AAAAAAAAAmc/tQrpWFPuzlU/s200/ToriAmosUnrepentantGeraldines.jpg" /></a></span></div><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The best song Tori performed from her most recent album, <i>Unrepentant Geraldines</i>, was “Oysters,” a pensive mediation on survival and art-making, even a metaphor for songwriting itself.&nbsp; I wish I’d had a chance to hear Tori play “Invisible Boy,” the stunning closing track from the album, one of the most heartbreaking songs she’s written in years.&nbsp; But oh well — there’s always the next tour.</span><o:p></o:p></div><!--EndFragment-->Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03004111643204359175noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5128479313373199891.post-52181527524109711592014-07-20T02:57:00.001-04:002014-07-20T04:17:24.540-04:00Andy Bey, The World According to Andy Bey (HighNote Records, 2013)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-522Z35kGreI/U8t7CJBvRpI/AAAAAAAAAmI/cGc6PRU8F_o/s1600/WorldAccordingToAndyBey.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-522Z35kGreI/U8t7CJBvRpI/AAAAAAAAAmI/cGc6PRU8F_o/s200/WorldAccordingToAndyBey.jpg" /></a></div> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:DocumentProperties> <o:Template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:Revision>0</o:Revision> <o:TotalTime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:Pages>1</o:Pages> <o:Words>507</o:Words> <o:Characters>2893</o:Characters> <o:Company>Emerson College</o:Company> <o:Lines>24</o:Lines> <o:Paragraphs>5</o:Paragraphs> <o:CharactersWithSpaces>3552</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:Version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:DontAutofitConstrainedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="276"> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Last year, the legendary yet under-celebrated jazz performer Andy Bey released his tenth studio album, the phenomenal <i>The World According to Andy Bey</i>, which received a Grammy nomination for Best Jazz Vocal Album.&nbsp; Bey’s latest release is an intimate solo affair for his voice and piano; it contains four original songs, along with seven fine renditions of some classic and lesser-known standards.&nbsp; As the album’s individually focused title suggests, Bey’s four-octave baritone takes up as much time and space as it needs throughout these eleven tracks.&nbsp; His warm vocals are by turns relaxed and impassioned, improvisational yet studied, burnished by time though never, ever tired.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DGkZnsCr6nU/U8tmj2U5P_I/AAAAAAAAAlo/09ZmzKeOa6s/s1600/AndyBey&BeySisters.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-DGkZnsCr6nU/U8tmj2U5P_I/AAAAAAAAAlo/09ZmzKeOa6s/s200/AndyBey&BeySisters.jpg" /></a></div>Andy Bey was born in 1939 in Newark, New Jersey.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>At age seventeen he formed a jazz trio, Andy and the Bey Sisters, with siblings Geraldine and Salome.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Moderate success throughout the 1960s and 1970s was followed by a fifteen-year hiatus from recording, from 1975 to 1990.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Bey’s career picked up again in the mid-1990s, just when his personal life began to take a darker turn.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Twenty years ago in 1994, he was diagnosed as HIV-positive, and he’s kept a steady regimen of yoga and a vegetarian diet ever since to keep himself healthy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Bey came out publicly as gay around the time of his diagnosis and has remained quietly outspoken for two decades now.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-n3n3FlOxGqc/U8tmfjYvXQI/AAAAAAAAAlg/qmWzQQ9QTp8/s1600/AndyBeyWatertower.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-n3n3FlOxGqc/U8tmfjYvXQI/AAAAAAAAAlg/qmWzQQ9QTp8/s200/AndyBeyWatertower.jpg" /></a></div>The four original compositions on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The World According to Andy Bey</i> are especially noteworthy, both for their distinctive spirit and their unique lyrical approach.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>“Dedicated to Miles,” Bey’s tribute to iconic jazz trumpeter Miles Davis, is a wordless bebop number that features Bey scatting an imitation of Davis’ playing style throughout the song.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The three other self-penned tracks are like sung journal entries that comment on the state of the contemporary world and offer gentle advice on how to survive it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>“The Demons Are After You” suggests that escaping one’s problems is “an individual journey, it will never work for the masses.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>“There’s So Many Ways to Approach the Blues” places emotion over intellect and argues by its end that telling the truth about hardship is the only real way to persevere.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>And the brilliant “Being Part of What’s Happening Now” considers our current cultural moment and the importance of remaining in touch with the world around us.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Among the album’s standards are three George and Ira Gershwin tunes, “But Not for Me,” “Love Is Here to Stay,” and “’S Wonderful,” along with Ira Gershwin’s lyrics on a sublime closing rendition of Harold Arlen’s “Dissertation on the State of Bliss.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Originally subtitled “Love and Learn Blues,” the song is a clever, point-blank assessment of heartache:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>“You may have climbed the tree of knowledge / But when you love you really learn.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Another Harold Arlen song, “The Morning After,” dwells on similar themes, while the album’s opening cut, Richard Rodgers’ and Lorenz Hart’s “It Never Entered My Mind,” contemplates loneliness on the far side of heartbreak’s distant retrospect.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8RBSESyKgDs/U8tnfRsSQ4I/AAAAAAAAAl4/3taDkWyyAlA/s1600/AndyBeyCloseup.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-8RBSESyKgDs/U8tnfRsSQ4I/AAAAAAAAAl4/3taDkWyyAlA/s200/AndyBeyCloseup.jpg" /></a></div>In Tony Cox’s 2004 interview with Bey that aired on National Public Radio, Cox asked Bey about the feeling of melancholy in his music.&nbsp; Bey replied, “Oh, when you live a certain amount of life, I mean, you try to breathe into a song a concept of what you’re feeling at that moment...it’s always trying to get inside the song with an intimacy in mind.”&nbsp; On every inspired moment of <i>The World According to Andy Bey</i>, the singer/pianist finds his way inside and fully inhabits each song. The result is a vital new collection of jazz classics.</span><o:p></o:p></div><!--EndFragment-->Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03004111643204359175noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5128479313373199891.post-88744635112574883382014-06-24T13:15:00.000-04:002014-06-24T13:32:22.363-04:0016th Annual Provincetown International Film Festival (June 18th - 22nd, 2014)<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rc72aE7-0mQ/U6mtPpVDJ6I/AAAAAAAAAjE/WjBytuOu7I0/s1600/PtownFilmFest2014Logo.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-rc72aE7-0mQ/U6mtPpVDJ6I/AAAAAAAAAjE/WjBytuOu7I0/s200/PtownFilmFest2014Logo.jpg" /></a></div> <!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <o:DocumentProperties> <o:Template>Normal.dotm</o:Template> <o:Revision>0</o:Revision> <o:TotalTime>0</o:TotalTime> <o:Pages>1</o:Pages> <o:Words>2097</o:Words> <o:Characters>11956</o:Characters> <o:Company>Emerson College</o:Company> <o:Lines>99</o:Lines> <o:Paragraphs>23</o:Paragraphs> <o:CharactersWithSpaces>14682</o:CharactersWithSpaces> <o:Version>12.0</o:Version> </o:DocumentProperties> <o:OfficeDocumentSettings> <o:AllowPNG/> </o:OfficeDocumentSettings></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:WordDocument> <w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom> <w:TrackMoves>false</w:TrackMoves> <w:TrackFormatting/> <w:PunctuationKerning/> <w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridHorizontalSpacing> <w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing>18 pt</w:DrawingGridVerticalSpacing> <w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayHorizontalDrawingGridEvery> <w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery>0</w:DisplayVerticalDrawingGridEvery> <w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/> <w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid> <w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent> <w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText> <w:Compatibility> <w:BreakWrappedTables/> <w:DontGrowAutofit/> <w:DontAutofitConstrainedTables/> <w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/> </w:Compatibility> </w:WordDocument></xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> <w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" LatentStyleCount="276"> </w:LatentStyles></xml><![endif]--> <!--[if gte mso 10]><style> /* Style Definitions */ table.MsoNormalTable {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; mso-style-noshow:yes; mso-style-parent:""; mso-padding-alt:0in 5.4pt 0in 5.4pt; mso-para-margin-top:0in; mso-para-margin-right:0in; mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; mso-para-margin-left:0in; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;} </style><![endif]--> <!--StartFragment--> <div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I’ve always said that Provincetown is the ideal place to host a film festival.&nbsp; During this past week’s 16th annual festival, I watched 17 movies total (nine narrative features and eight documentaries, as well as some short films), all of which were of excellent quality.&nbsp; This year the weather happened to be perfect, too, making many people ask how I could spend so much time inside a dark theater, rather than heading to the beach.&nbsp; I’ve often contemplated feeling guilty about that, but films are soul-regenerating experiences for me and therefore justify missing out on a bit of sunshine.&nbsp; Plus, with a diversity of festival venues in easy walking distance of each other, and with stunning ocean views as one travels between venues, I saw nearly as much sun as I did movies.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The documentaries in particular at this year’s festival felt uniformly strong.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I think this has been a trend in recent cinema over the past decade.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Reality can often be more visceral and unsettling than fiction, though fiction is almost always drawn from reality, so reality and fiction mutually reinforce one another.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Startlingly, my two favorite documentaries in this year’s festival were about criminal cases, both of which received significant media attention during their own times.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8VApy96ozV4/U6mxwSe_ZZI/AAAAAAAAAlA/v1rkeLZvDnE/s1600/CaptivatedPoster.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-8VApy96ozV4/U6mxwSe_ZZI/AAAAAAAAAlA/v1rkeLZvDnE/s200/CaptivatedPoster.jpg" /></a></div></div></div></div><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div>Captivated:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The Trials of Pamela Smart</i>was, I’m proud to say, directed by a former student of mine, Jeremiah Zagar.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The film’s subject was found guilty of murdering her husband in 1990, having been involved with a trio of students from a New Hampshire high school where she was a media technician.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Pamela Smart’s husband was caught having an affair shortly before the murder, so it was thought of and subsequently depicted as a revenge killing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Although one of the teenagers testified on the courtroom stand that he had pulled the trigger, the jury didn’t buy it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>As an accomplice Smart was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole, and she remains behind bars at a New York state maximum-security prison today.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Smart’s case was the first televised murder trial to receive widespread media attention and continual coverage.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Many have argued that the media coverage had a direct effect on the jury’s verdict and the final outcome of Smart’s sentencing.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The case’s most famous media treatment was Gus Van Sant’s film <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">To Die For</i>, starring Nicole Kidman, based on the novel by Joyce Maynard; the case also spawned a made-for-television courtroom drama with Helen Hunt in the central role.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Smart’s beauty queen looks and fixed, stoic gaze in nearly every existing image of her caused her to be dubbed “the ice princess.”<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>As Maynard perceptively comments when interviewed in the film, there’s no bigger cultural thrill than the archetype of taking down a beautiful woman.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The female professor who worked with Smart on her degrees earned in prison also notes that Smart was the brightest student she’d ever worked with in 34 years of teaching.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">The film’s greatest strength is that it’s about so much more than just the trial itself.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>It’s a fascinating and finely constructed exploration of how we (and the media) shape narratives, and how those narratives shape and misshape us, until the narratives themselves are all that we see.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Reality gradually becomes a fiction that bears little relation to reality in the end.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>One of the film’s interviewees mentions that humans in televised situations lose their humanity, instead taking on the audience’s perceptions.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Truth gets upended and subjectified from every angle.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WK35StDJzRs/U6mts-QjDfI/AAAAAAAAAjU/OwAKJye1jnM/s1600/PamelaSmart.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-WK35StDJzRs/U6mts-QjDfI/AAAAAAAAAjU/OwAKJye1jnM/s200/PamelaSmart.jpg" /></a></div>In a brilliant directorial move that seems influenced by the innovative interview techniques of celebrated documentarian Errol Morris, Zagar often films his commentators’ reactions to archival footage of the Smart case <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">through</i> projected images of the vintage television footage itself, so that we see both the archival images and the interviewees’ facial expressions simultaneously.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>It’s an ingenious device that suggests how we ourselves have become overlaid by streams of images placed before us by the media.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Zagar also resizes the footage for a variety of vintage TV screens at various stages of the film, even using a curtained theater stage as a visual framework to bookend the movie.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NudZIMmYI8w/U6muML29cVI/AAAAAAAAAjc/YKMV6IIsO9A/s1600/TheDog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-NudZIMmYI8w/U6muML29cVI/AAAAAAAAAjc/YKMV6IIsO9A/s200/TheDog.jpg" /></a></div><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Dog</i>, a documentary directed by Allison Berg and Frank Keraudren, was my favorite film from this year’s festival.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>It tells the bizarre and fascinating tale of John Wojtowicz, who rose to infamy almost by accident in the summer of 1972, when he decided to rob a Brooklyn bank with two acquaintances to fund gender reassignment surgery for his boyfriend Ernie (later known as Liz Eden).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>If the story sounds familiar, you’re correct:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>it was the basis for Sidney Lumet’s popular 1975 film <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Dog Day Afternoon</i>, which starred Al Pacino as Wojtowicz.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Bank employees were held hostage, cops surrounded the establishment, and the would-be robbers had the audacity to have pizzas delivered to them at the bank at the height of the media buzz outside.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">As usual, the best documentaries delve into the oddest material, and each figure that’s featured in this film is a full-fledged character.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>From Wojtowicz’s first wife, Carmen, who’s as animated as a round pink cartoon cut-out come to life, to Wojtowicz’s wispy yet domineering mother, their personalities are all arresting because they’re all so unassumingly and unavoidably themselves. Wojtowicz commands attention throughout every scene in which he appears.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>He’s a charismatic, fast-talking, self-proclaimed “pervert” who seemingly became gay when he woke up to find a fellow military officer giving him a blowjob earlier in his life.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Well-intentioned and also somewhat confused, he makes it easy to see why not one but three people (Carmen, Ernie, and John’s prison boyfriend George) were drawn into his romantic orbit and never able to leave it.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-m_CS5g2h0Ho/U6muYcFEmNI/AAAAAAAAAjk/-7UbnYdCzE0/s1600/JohnWojtowiczMugshot.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-m_CS5g2h0Ho/U6muYcFEmNI/AAAAAAAAAjk/-7UbnYdCzE0/s200/JohnWojtowiczMugshot.jpg" /></a>Not that it’s always that simple. During the burgeoning gay movement in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Wojtowicz came under scrutiny by the gay rights organizations with which he was involved.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Members of the early Gay Activists Alliance felt that he was totally crazy, a diagnosis that seems increasingly possible as the documentary progresses.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>He’s a hard figure to know whether or not to trust, yet he convincingly argues that Hollywood made $50 million from his crime via Lumet’s film, while he received only a couple thousand dollars worth of compensation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>His life is an interesting example of how people who follow the rules rarely make for intriguing storytelling.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Even more compelling is the unique cross-section of queer history that the film provides.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Wojtowicz lived through the closeted 1950s and early 1960s, the Stonewall Riots of 1969, and the beginnings of recognition of transgender identity in the 1970s and 1980s.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>We sadly watch his startling physical decline over the decade that the documentarians recorded their interviews with him; he dwindles from a happily rotund raconteur to a haunted but still spirited wraith of a man who’s dying of cancer, as his mentally challenged brother rolls him around the Brooklyn Zoo in a wheelchair. Wojtowicz died in 2006.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yfY0K37C5k0/U6mujvC4hTI/AAAAAAAAAjs/-05c1hKEKlE/s1600/LoveIsStrange.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-yfY0K37C5k0/U6mujvC4hTI/AAAAAAAAAjs/-05c1hKEKlE/s200/LoveIsStrange.jpg" /></a></div>My favorite among the narrative features that I saw at the festival this year was Ira Sachs’s beautiful and languidly paced <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Love Is Strange</i>, starring John Lithgow and Alfred Molina.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I’d really been looking forward to seeing this film in the festival because so few mainstream movies focus on middle-aged or older gay male couples.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>In this case, the characters have been living together in New York for 39 years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Ben (Lithgow) is a painter, while George (Molina) is a musician and teacher who loses his job at a Catholic school after administrators see photos of the couple’s marriage ceremony on Facebook.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>As a result, Ben and George also lose their apartment and are forced to move in with friends and relatives at separate locations in the city.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">Although the movie’s central conflict feels a bit unlikely, it also seems totally plausible in today’s economy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I admired how the film directly addresses a theme that almost never gets discussed:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>how artistic or bohemian gay men of a certain age get left behind by the culture, financially and otherwise.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>That element of the film is tempered by another key aspect.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The movie is a rich love letter to New York, or a specific version of New York, one that will be familiar to anyone who’s spent a good amount of time there; a soft-focused, burnished light suffuses many of the scenes.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8s8CqO6CE0k/U6murFcVUGI/AAAAAAAAAj0/4OKGhHdB5lI/s1600/JohnLithgowAlfredMolina.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-8s8CqO6CE0k/U6murFcVUGI/AAAAAAAAAj0/4OKGhHdB5lI/s200/JohnLithgowAlfredMolina.jpg" /></a></div>Alongside this distinctive visual tone, the lead performances are totally pitch-perfect as well.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Somehow, Lithgow and Molina convey the close intimacy of men who’ve lived together in very close quarters for nearly four decades.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>After they’ve been displaced from the comfort of their home, there’s a very moving scene that takes place on the small lower mattress of a bunk bed, where the pair of men snuggle face to face, gazing at each other with a long familiarity that only actors of this caliber can evoke for an audience.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I’ve enjoyed all of Ira Sachs’s films, and I think this is his finest film so far.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pjYYn_RxIf8/U6muyDSpU-I/AAAAAAAAAj8/bNfHROyBKsI/s1600/TwoFacesOfJanuary.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-pjYYn_RxIf8/U6muyDSpU-I/AAAAAAAAAj8/bNfHROyBKsI/s200/TwoFacesOfJanuary.jpg" /></a></div><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Two Faces of January</i>, an epic-scale thriller that’s set in Greece and directed by Hossein Amini, adapts Patricia Highsmith’s 1964 novel as high-gloss Hollywood fare that should actually fare rather well with the art-house crowd instead.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>This sweeping period piece is propelled by a love triangle between a wealthy American couple played by Viggo Mortensen and Kirsten Dunst, and a handsome American traveler/translator played by Oscar Isaac.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>As the two men compete for the affections of the same woman, a good deal of homoerotic tension builds between their characters, something that Highsmith clearly intended and that Mortensen and Isaac subtly portray.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-IWGl11izIJ8/U6mu45i9EwI/AAAAAAAAAkE/T7v2wXF-VN4/s1600/ViggoMortensenOscarIsaac.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-IWGl11izIJ8/U6mu45i9EwI/AAAAAAAAAkE/T7v2wXF-VN4/s200/ViggoMortensenOscarIsaac.jpg" /></a></div>I love the feeling of watching a movie and not being sure exactly where I’ve seen an actor before, and I love even more the feeling of finally realizing who that actor is.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I was mesmerized by Oscar Isaac’s face throughout this entire film and figured out by the end that he’s the guy who recently starred in the Coen Brothers’ movie <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Inside Llewyn Davis</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Shaving off his little beard has made all the difference; Isaac now resembles a young Robert De Niro or Al Pacino, along with the acting chops to merit those comparisons.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HLSxNNckh4Q/U6mu_8rNF2I/AAAAAAAAAkM/bIIfcQHFrak/s1600/DunstIsaacMortensen.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-HLSxNNckh4Q/U6mu_8rNF2I/AAAAAAAAAkM/bIIfcQHFrak/s200/DunstIsaacMortensen.jpg" /></a></div>Isaac’s character, Rydel, becomes involved with Mortensen’s and Dunst’s married couple when he witnesses the aftermath of an unintentional murder.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>For unexplained reasons, Rydel attempts to help the couple undo what can’t be undone, and with each step of their improvised escape plan, he only gets himself more deeply embroiled in their situation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Although some may find the characters a bit too caricatured and the story’s abrupt plot twists a bit too jarring and clichéd, it’s important to keep in mind that Highsmith was a genre writer.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Sudden plot turns that might feel clunky and obvious in other movies are appropriate decisions here; moments of blunt violence fall like hammer blows.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I found the film to be thoroughly engaging from beginning to end.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">A fun and related side-note:<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>at the festival’s press luncheon, I talked with superstar producer Christine Vachon’s assistant and asked him what the director Todd Haynes has been up to lately.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I was excited to learn that Haynes finished filming an adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s lesbian-themed 1952 romance <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Price of Salt</i> earlier this year.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The movie, titled <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Carol</i>, will star Cate Blanchett and Rooney Mara.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>It was shot in my childhood hometown of Cincinnati, Ohio, with the city’s famed Over-the-Rhine neighborhood standing in for old-school New York.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-OL6FxNSEDQo/U6mvGqymuOI/AAAAAAAAAkU/3Ua60xi2xD8/s1600/BeginAgain.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-OL6FxNSEDQo/U6mvGqymuOI/AAAAAAAAAkU/3Ua60xi2xD8/s200/BeginAgain.jpg" /></a></div>The most mainstream film that I saw at the festival this year was John Carney’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Begin Again</i>, which retains the director’s popular formula from his Academy Award-winning movie <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Once</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Keira Knightley and Mark Ruffalo turn in energetic performances as a songwriter and a music industry rep on the skids, respectively.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I was literally flipping out in my seat at the back of the theater when I saw the words “music by Gregg Alexander” appear on the screen.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>He’s always been one of my favorite musicians, so it’s great to hear such awesome new material, often sung by the character played by Adam Levine of the band Maroon 5.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>(I wrote a long blog post about Gregg Alexander’s byzantine career back in 2010, so please feel free to check that one out, too.)<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;"><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nch5f8fczGo/U6mvLqTfktI/AAAAAAAAAkc/TQan9csqBwU/s1600/LavenderHill.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-nch5f8fczGo/U6mvLqTfktI/AAAAAAAAAkc/TQan9csqBwU/s200/LavenderHill.jpg" /></a></div>Finally, I want to comment briefly about one short film that I saw at the festival, a documentary by Austin Bunn and Robert Hazen titled <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lavender Hill</i>.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>I’ve taught a college course on queer history and identity for the past 13 years now, and this film provides a wonderful missing link in the evolutionary chain towards LGBTQ liberation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>Lavender Hill, located in the Finger Lakes region near Ithaca, New York, was founded in the early 1970s as an 80-acre commune for gay men and lesbians, among the very first of its kind.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The film features thoughtful retrospective interviews with the core group of its living members, as well as hosting a reunion dinner for the commune’s original group 40 years later.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>They reminisce about the magic of free love in that bygone era, which helped lead to the benefit of living the much more open lives that many LGBTQ individuals enjoy today.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">&nbsp; </span>The film’s vintage footage and overall vibe reminded me in some ways of the Radical Faeries gatherings that I’ve attended in Vermont for several years now, though the people in the film seemed closer back then, if only because their survival required it.<o:p></o:p></span></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><br /></div><div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in; mso-layout-grid-align: none; mso-pagination: none; text-align: justify; text-autospace: none;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS', sans-serif;">I thought about community a lot during the course of my past week at the festival.&nbsp; Of course, film festivals are essentially about community, and not just artistic and commercial communities, but human community.&nbsp; During a number of films, a feeling overcame me of being somehow at one with the audience, despite how individuated our own minds are whenever we’re watching anything.&nbsp; What makes our perspectives of a film different while we’re viewing it?&nbsp; What makes other viewers’ perspectives overlap with our own when we discuss a film afterwards?&nbsp; It’s ironic and also a bit sad, admittedly, that I often feel closer to other people through movies than I do any other way, a commentary on the mediated times in which we live.&nbsp; Images of other people and their stories can start to seem more real to us than the people on whom those stories and images are based.&nbsp; The difference at a film festival is that you meet the actual people behind the images and start knowing them better, as well as meeting other filmgoers who feel inspired to do the same.</span><o:p></o:p></div><!--EndFragment-->Jasonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/03004111643204359175noreply@blogger.com0